[October, I860.] 289 



SPRING FLOWEES OF THE SOUTH OF EUROPE. 



Remarks on some of the Spring Flowers of the South of Europe, 

 and on their representatives in the British Isles. 



The English botanist who has resided or travelled in the coun- 

 tries of southern Europe, and has filled his herbarium with the 

 treasures of their copious Flora, must often have thought, with 

 almost envious regret, of the comparative poverty of our own. 

 But as we have no power to change the lot which in this matter 

 the general arrangements of Nature have assigned to us, we shall 

 do well to look at its brighter side, and find matter for congra- 

 tulation in some points of superiority which our indigenous Flora, 

 meagre though it be in comparison with those of France and Italy, 

 nevertheless possesses over the richest regions of the basin of the 

 Mediterranean. Two of these points have particularly impressed 

 me in the course of a tolerably extensive wandering over the south 

 of Europe, and I will communicate them here for the benefit of 

 those who may not already have adverted to them. 



The first is our pre-eminence in Ferns. Though the species 

 of Phsenogamous plants in (for instance) the French Flora, out- 

 number ours almost in the ratio of four to one, the species of 

 Ferns in the two countries are about equally numerous, and in- 

 deed nearly identical. In the excellent Flora of MM. Grenier 

 and Godron the only Ferns which are not (under the same or 

 some other name) included in the fourth edition of Mr. Babing- 

 ton's ' Manual,^ are two Nothoclmus, N. Maranta and vellea (the 

 last found only in Corsica) , Pteris cretica (also confined to Cor- 

 sica) , Cheilanthes odor a, and Scolopendrium Hemionitis. Two more, 

 Ophioglossum lusitanicum and Grammitis /e/?/o/?%//fl, are, as British 

 plants, limited to the Channel Islands. On the other hand, Las- 

 trea Foenisecii, Hymenophyllum Wilsoni, and Trichomanes radi- 

 cans, among the most precious of our ferny treasures, have not 

 hitherto been discovered in France. We are thus scarcely out- 

 numbered in species of Ferns by the whole of France, Corsica in- 

 cluded. But when we compare this country, not with all France, 

 but with the part of it which in most branches of botany we have 

 greatest reason to envy, — the Mediterranean provinces, — we find 

 that they, in this particular department, have cause to envy us, 

 their powerful sun and dry atmosphere, to which they owe their 



N. S. VOL. IV. 2 P 



