I860.] VERONICA PEREGRINA AT PERTH. 269 



VERONICA PEREGEINA AT PEETH. 



By John Sim, A.B.S.Ed. 



This city, as is well known, is celebrated for the fine situation 

 it enjoys, on the banks of the noblest river in Britain, and also 

 for the exquisite scenery with which it is surrounded; hence, 

 probably, it received the rather flattering name of the " Fair City." 

 But Perth, in spite of its pleasant site and charming environs, 

 has only an equivocal reputation among some members of the 

 amiable science. The conservatives, who look with no friendly 

 feeling at the annual increase of the British Flora in this quarter, 

 those who scruple to admit into orthodox lists of native produc- 

 tions plants which were not recognized by Bay, Hudson, Wi- 

 thering, and Smith, have their patience severely tried and their 

 equanimity much disturbed by new claimants to a share of bota- 

 nical notice. The plants themselves are blameless ; they could 

 not help being the unconscious cause of dissatisfaction to some 

 part of the brotherhood ; and the discoverer is also sakeless, for 

 he only found them, but did not place them there. He merely 

 records the facts as they occur, and sends the simple statement 

 of his discoveries to the ' Phytologist,' the refuge for these inter- 

 esting though troublesome wanderers from their natal dwellings. 



The inhabitants of Great Britain are a mixed race, and hence 

 they partake, it is to be hoped, of the good qualities of the min- 

 gled races from which they have sprung. Is it strange that our 

 Flora should be formed after the same ethnological type ? An- 

 other fresh comer has to be announced, an arrival not so start- 

 ling as that of Aremonia agrimonioides, which is at home on the 

 hills of Greece and the Levant ; but a ^dsitant from the opposite 

 continent recently found in Ireland a kind of halfway-house be- 

 tween Great Britain and the western parts of Europe. 



This plant, Veronica peregrina, was gathered by me last month 

 in Mr. TurnbuU's nursery, near Perth. I found it growing abun- 

 dantly as a weed of cultivation, and it was probably imported 

 with seeds. Be this as it may, its luxuriance gave unmistake- 

 able evidence that it had found in the vicinity of the Fair City 

 a soil and climate congenial to its nature. This plant has also 

 been found at Belfast ; and as it is widely distributed throughout 

 the continent of Europe, may also become permanently and ex- 



