VIL] TKAVELS OF FEATHERED SEEDS. 161 



down off the mountains ; and that S. umbrosa, though 

 in Kerry it has got off the mountains and down to the 

 sea-level, exterminating, I suspect, many species in 

 its progress, yet cannot get across County Cork ? The 

 only answer is, I believe, that both species are con- 

 tinually trying to go ahead ; but that the other plants 

 already in front of them are too strong for them, and 

 massacre their infants as soon as born. 



And this brings us to another curious question : 

 the sudden and abundant appearance of plants, like 

 the foxglove and Epilobium angustifolium, in spots 

 where they have never been seen before. Are there 

 seeds, as some think, dormant in the ground; or are 

 the seeds which have germinated, fresh ones wafted 

 thither by wind or otherwise, and only able to germi- 

 nate in that one spot because there -the soil is clear ? 

 General Monro, now famous for his unequalled memoir 

 on the bamboos, holds to the latter theory. He pointed 

 out to me that the Epilobium seeds, being feathered, 

 could travel with the wind; that the plant always 

 made its appearance first on new banks, landslips, 

 clearings, where it had nothing to compete against; 

 and that the foxglove did the same. True, and most 

 painfully true, in the case of thistles and groundsels : 

 but foxglove seeds, though minute, would hardly be 

 carried by the wind any more than those of the white 

 clover, which comes up so abundantly in drained fens. 

 Adhuc sub judice lis est, and I wish some young 

 naturalists would work carefully at the solution ; by 

 experiment, which is the most sure way to find out 

 anything. 



But in researches in this direction they will find 

 puzzles enough. I will give them one which I shall 

 so. M 



