365 



Occurrence of Anacharis Alsinastrum, Bab., in Yorkshire. 

 By William Foggitt, Esq. 



I COMMUNICATE, for the information of your readers, the fact of the 

 occurrence of Anacharis Alsinastrum, in the greatest abundance, inter- 

 mingled with Potamogetou densus, perfoliatus, and other aquatic plants, 

 in a pond close by the river Wiske, at Newsham, near Thirsk. The 

 pond I had only examined once previously ; and at that time, where A. 

 Alsinastrum now grows, it was covered with the foliage of Sagittaria 

 sagittifolia, which may account for its not having been previously 

 noticed in this locality. It is twelve miles from the nearest naviga- 

 tion, so that it cannot by that means have been introduced ; and in 

 my mind it is truly indigenous. 



William Foggitt. 

 Thirsk, October 10, 1851. 



Reply to the Notice of Observations on Natural Systems of Botany'' 

 {Phytol. iv. 31.3). By James L. Drummond, M.D., &c., &c. 



As to converting the ' Phytologist' into an arena of controversy, 

 nothing could be further from my wish. I have seldom known con- 

 troversies do much, if any, good ; and, besides, after all the lengthy 

 communication of your correspondent, I believe that the leading argu- 

 ments of my little book remain untouched. That some parts of the 

 work were written carelessly or thoughtlessly, I acknowledge. There 

 could be no more glaring mistake than that of objecting to the lupin, 

 trefoil and Laburnum being classed together. This was very bad, 

 and yet it would be absurd to imagine that it arose from ignorance, 

 especially when, in the four editions of my ' First Steps to Botany,' 

 these three plants are specified as belonging to the class Diadelphia. 

 In my saying that Linnaeus would scarcely have joined certain plants 

 in the same group with others which I mentioned, I never thought it 

 necessary to look whether, in his incongruous Fragments, such plants 

 were included in the same order or not, because what I meant was, 

 that he could not so group them on the ground of their closely resem- 

 bling each other, and in this impression I concluded with the follow- 

 ing passage : — " In an artificial system it matters not how incongruous 

 may be the species included in any class or order ; but to find such 

 as the above, and hundreds of others, in systems professing to arrange 



