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Note on Mr. Lees's Remarks on Starred Plants. 

 By the Rev. W. T. Bree, M.A. 



" Boast of this T can, — 



Though baiiish'd, yet a true-born Englishman." 



King Richard II., Act. i. Sc. 3. 



On pemsiug Mr. Lees's " Remarks on some Starred Plants in the 

 new edition of the ' British Flora'" (Phytol. iv. 56), I was much sur- 

 prised to learn that Aquilegia vulgaris is suspected to be an intro- 

 duced, not a native, species. Now I have met with this plant, wild 

 as I supposed, in many different localities, though at the present 

 moment my memory does not serve me to name off-hand more than 

 two, viz., Shotover Hill, near Oxford, and my own wood on the out- 

 skirts of this parish. In neither of these instances, as well as in many 

 more which might be added, can I bring myself to think it has been 

 introduced, either by design or accident. The columbine, I firmly 

 believe, has not crept out of the cottage-garden into the wood, but the 

 reverse; it has been brought out of the wood into the garden. Mr. 

 Lees appears to me precisely to have " hit the right nail on the head," 

 when he remarks so justly that " it seems to be lost sight of by many 

 persons, how frequently the root of a pretty wild-flower is dug up from 

 the place of its nativity and transplanted to a garden : this was done 

 to a far greater extent formerly than it is now." No doubt it was, 

 before the introduction of such hosts of beautiful species from foreign 

 countries, which have gone far to put our native beauties almost out 

 of countenance. It has often struck me as quite a natural thing, and 

 just what might have been expected, that the first rude attempt at 

 floriculture should have consisted of the transfer to the garden of some 

 of our more ornamental and less common, or at least local, native 

 species. And accordingly plants more or less answering to this cha- 

 racter we see (or used to see) find a place in almost every old woman's 

 garden, though it were scarcely larger than the parlour carpet; as 

 e. g.,— 



Crocus vernus 

 Polemonium caeruleum 

 Vinca minor 

 Lonicera Caprifolium 

 Statice Armeria 

 Convallaria majalis 



Vol. IV. s 



