266 isATis TiNCTORiA. [^September, 



those of the learned author of the ' Cybele/ that botanists some- 

 times, like debtors, have but short memories. They do not 

 remember what they borrow so long as they remember what 

 they lend. The author of the ' Cybele ' might have seen the 

 fact in Buxton's ' Flora of Manchester/ and he probably did see 

 it in the '^ Phytologist/ but, being oblivious, he forgot to enter it 

 in the ' Cybele.' The Editor agrees with his correspondent Q,. 

 that this plant was known in the Mersey Province before the 

 publication of the Thirsk Report as quoted above, and that the 

 fact was not first promulgated by Mr. E. Smith, although the 

 latter is credited with this fancied new discovery. 



ISATIS TINCTOEIA. 



The notice in last month's ' Phytologist ' of Isatis tindoria, 

 as growing in a railway cutting near Wandsworth, suggests a 

 question of considerable interest, which many persons, both 

 botanists and others, must have the means of answering. So 

 many plants are continually making their appearance on railway 

 embankments, which have never been seen in any neighbouring 

 locality from whence they can have spread, that if these situa- 

 tions are to be considered as legitimate habitats, they constitute 

 a very material addition to the local Floras. But, I confess, 

 their effect on me is to raise a strong presumption that the plants 

 are there only as products of culture. It is certain that the 

 railway companies sow grass on the embankments and in the 

 cuttings, and is it not probable that the Melilotus alba, (Enothera 

 biennis, and other plants of known or suspected foreign origin, 

 which so often start up in these localities, have also been sown 

 there? If not, the Melilotus in particular, from being a plant 

 of doubtful wildness, has grown into one of our common species, 

 and shoWs, to say the least, a remarkable preference for artifi- 

 cially piled-up soil. I shall be glad if it is so ; but it is to be 

 hoped that the point will be cleared up before these stations are 

 recognized as habitats, in the proper sense of the word, for any 

 of our rarer plants. 



While I am on the subject of Isatis, I may mention that, in 

 the summer of 1858, I observed it in a Kentish locality, which 



