THE BEGINNINGS OF SPRING. 21 



not quite for its presence here. How did it get from the 

 Continent to Claverton Down ? 



If the occurrence of the hairy spurge in England were 

 an isolated case, we might suppose that it had been acci- 

 dentally imported by man, or that the seed had been 

 blown here by the wind, or that it had been carried over 

 by clinging to the feet of birds. Such accidents do un- 

 doubtedly account for many special facts of distribution 

 and acclimatization for example, all oceanic islands, as 

 Mr. Wallace has amply shown, are peopled with mere 

 waifs and strays of various distant faunas and floras in 

 just this fragmentary fashion. But the case of the 

 spurge is by no means a solitary one ; on the contrary, 

 the south-western districts of England and of Ireland are 

 full of peculiar species found in no other parts of Brit- 

 ain. Thus a pretty little purple lobelia, a familiar plant 

 in southern France and Spain, is alone found with us on 

 a single common near Axminster in Devon. So, too, 

 Cornwall and the Scilly Isles are rich in southern forms. 

 The arbutus, or strawberry tree, which grows so abun- 

 dantly, with its white bell -shaped blossoms and its pretty 

 red berries, over the Provencal hills, is met again quite 

 unexpectedly on the mountains of Kerry. The Mediter- 

 ranean heath that beautiful white scented heather which 

 every visitor to the Pyrenees has gathered in spring 

 among the pine-woods of Pau and Arcachon turns up 

 once more a thousand miles off in Connemara. Alto- 

 gether, no fewer than twelve Spanish species are found 

 in south-western Ireland, and in no other part of Brit- 

 ain ; while similar species extend to Pembrokeshire, or 

 are peculiar to the south-western peninsula of England 

 and the Mediterranean or Spain and Portugal. A spe- 

 cial Portuguese slug and a few other southern animals 

 are also found under the same conditions. 



