48 NOTES ON BOTANY. 



history as well as people and nations. It is a history which is 

 harder to read, because it runs back into an antiquity to which the 

 oldest records of our own race are as nothing ; but, on the other 

 hand, the records (such of them as are left) do not lie to us ; they 

 have no party bias, and there are no forged documents. 



To-day I should like to lay before you a few thoughts which 

 occur to me in connection with the later history of some of our 

 rarer plants. How do we come to possess them 1 We all know 

 that the Flora of Britain is a derivative one. That means that our 

 plants came to us as immigrants from other lands, and cannot claim 

 to be avr6x6ov(s. And they came so recently (as geologists 

 reckon time) that there has not yet been time enough for them to 

 be differentiated into new species, distinct from those found on the 

 Continent. To this there are very few exceptions. Among the 

 fruticose Rubi a few British forms are as yet unknown elsewhere. 

 The most marked of these is R. longitltyrsiger, Lees \R. pyramidalis, 

 Bab. non. Kalt.], which is found plentifully in many places in 

 Wales and the south-western counties of England, and should be 

 looked for in the western districts of this county. But it mat/ also 

 grow in Brittany, a province whose brambles require a very careful 

 examination in connection with Damnonian forms ; and, again, it is 

 in some of its states very close to R. Bellardi, Weihe, a well known 

 Continental form. 



Then we have another bramble widely distributed over this 

 country (and also found in Hants), which, though referred by 

 Professor Babington to R. melanoxylon, P. J. Mull., is stated by 

 Focke to be quite distinct from that plant, and unknown on the 

 Continent. Very curiously, he professes himself unable to distin- 

 guish it from R. fongitliyrsiger, which seems strange to those who 

 know it in the fresh state. Perhaps one more bramble may be 

 noticed viz., R. Lindleianus, Lees. This is a well-marked and 

 very widely distributed form in Britain, but was quite unknown on 

 the Continent until very lately, when it was found in a single 

 locality in Northern Germany. It is, however, possible that the 

 form may have had there an independent origin, which is my reason 



