264 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



Miss P. told me, however, of some ; for in- 

 stance, the Isle of Man cabbage has not yet 

 been observed in any other parts of the world 

 than in that island, in the Hebrides, and on 

 the north-western shores of England and Scot- 

 land. One of the most interesting of our 

 British plants, she says, is pipewort ; for in 

 no part of the continent of Europe is it, or 

 any individual of this genus, to be found; and, 

 what is very remarkable, though all the other 

 other species of the family are inhabitants of the 

 tropics, yet ours is found in one of the most 

 northern of the Hebrides, and in a lake which is 

 peculiarly cold. 



It is the same among the cryptogamous tribes, 

 such as lichens, fungi, and mosses. Though we 

 think Britain rich in that extensive class, most of 

 them are known in other parts of Europe, or in 

 North America; and she says it is a singular fact, 

 that the lower we descend in the scale of vegetation, 

 the more universally are the individuals of those 

 tribes dispersed over the surface of the globe. In 

 Carolina, for example, a large proportion of the 

 fungi are the same with those of France and Ger- 

 many, while among what she calls the phenogamous 

 plants, or those which have visible flowers, there 

 are scarcely any that are common to Europe. 



The mosses too, which have been received from 

 the higher parts of North America, and from 

 Kamtschatka, are almost all indigenous in Europe, 



