448 



prevailing vegetable productions to the character of the soil in which 

 they grow. To my mind it furnishes a striking instance, not only of 

 the " Wisdom of God in Creation," but of the wisdom of God in pro- 

 vidence also. In a district of almost pure sand, while the more inland 

 and level part is covered with common vegetation and vegetable mould, 

 the seaward portion has been gradually overgrown with Ammophila 

 arenaria, Carex arenaria, Elymus arenarius, and several other plants, 

 all so well fitted by their creeping roots to bind the sand and prevent 

 it from shifting. Even Equisetum variegatum, though confined to a 

 small space, has its creeping root, and is calculated to serve the same 

 end. And thus, in the first instance, an arid waste of sand, either up- 

 heaved from the bottom of the sea or exposed by the gradual retiring 

 of its waters, and in that state utterly destitute of vegetation, has, by 

 the agency of a powerful wind, been partly accumulated into a natu- 

 ral bulwark against the return of the ocean ; and then, while its plains 

 have by degrees been covered with a mould which has converted them 

 into land capable of cultivation, its still sandy heaps which compose 

 that bulwark have become consolidated, even to the verge of the 

 sea, by a dense covering of plants, the most prominent and important 

 of which are found only in such localities. J. B. Brichan. 



Manse of Banchory, December 1, 1842. 



Art. CIX. — County Lists of the British Ferns and their Allies. 

 Compiled by Edward Newman. 



I DO not wish to conceal the fact that the perusal of Mr. Watson's 

 admirable paper on the ' Geographical distribution of British Ferns,' 

 has been the means of inducing me to attempt a still more rigid in- 

 vestigation of the produce of our counties, so far as regards this beauti- 

 ful family of plants. In prosecuting this design, I find myself at the 

 very threshold compelled to abandon my original intention of restrict- 

 ing each county list to the observations of an individual botanist : 

 the kind and prompt attention with which my wish, expressed in 'The 

 Phytologist,' has been met, enables me to make these lists far more 

 interesting, by combining under each county the observations of ma- 

 ny botanists. In employing the nomenclature formerly proposed by 

 myself, and subsequently adopted in the valuable Catalogue publish- 

 ed by the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, I conform to the usage of 

 the majority of my correspondents. The authorities are arranged as 



