440 NATIVITY OF INULA HELENiuM, ETC. \February 



winkle should follow suit. Some may demur to this illustration 

 of the old proverb, " Birds of a feather flock together" — Similes 

 similibus congregantur. 



This judgment is however justifiable, on the law laid down by 

 the farmer, who according to the fabulist condemned the pigeon 

 because she was an associate of the rooks, and as guilty of 

 plundering as the birds of the black-feathered races. Do na- 

 turalists proceed on these principles in determining the nativity 

 of plants? If so, they should discard the Primrose, the Wood 

 Luzulas, and many other unquestioned native plants which are 

 associated in woods with the unhappy Periwinkle. 



The Dwarf Elder appears in above twenty British local lists, 

 and it is unsuspected in all but three. 



If these two plants, Vinca minor and Sambucus Ebulus, are to 

 be classed among the introductions, the aliens and the denizens, 

 because they are not found growing spontaneously in every dis- 

 trict which has a list of its vegetable productions, surely on the 

 same principle and for the same reasons the Elecampane should 

 appear among these doubtful natives or suspected aliens. 



This latter species. Inula Helenium, does not appear in above 

 one-half of the local lists, and in at least one-half of them 

 it is a questionable native. Besides this, in every one of 

 these districts from which it has been reported as genuine, 

 other localities are produced which are certainly suspicious 

 and where the Inula plainly appears to be an escape, as it is 

 called, or found growing in parts where it was formerly cultivated, 

 as, for example, in the grounds of Quarr Abbey, a ruin near 

 Ryde, in the Isle of Wight. 



But there is another notoriously exotic species which illustrates 

 the caprice or inconsistency, or what you will, charitable reader, 

 of the author of the ' Cybele,' viz. Euphorbia Esula, which never 

 has had any voucher for its native origin. (See ' Phytologist ' 

 for November, 1862, p. 349.) 



All the Scottish botanists unanimously ignore it as a Scottish 

 species. Smith enters it on Lightfoot's authority (see E. F.), 

 without consulting his predecessor, and the author of the ' Cybele^ 

 blindly trusted to this blind guide and entered a plant as a na- 

 tive (?) which does not appear in any local Flora whatever, either 

 as a native or a naturalized species. To this day, it appears to be 

 confined to its old locality, Hulne Abbey walls. 



