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CHAPTER IX. 



DISTRIBUTION OF BRITISH PLANTS, AND THEIR RELATIONS 

 WITH THE DIFFERENT FLORAS OF THE CONTINENT. 



REFLECTING as we cannot but sometimes do now all our 

 travels are over, on the many strange lands we have visited, 

 and all the new forms we have seen, it is, we own, with a 

 slight sense of self-reproach that we remember how in tra- 

 versing the Colder Temperate Zone ' ' we sailed by the white 

 cliffs of Britain," in our haste to see new lands, without 

 setting foot on the shore, as if there were nothing in our 

 own country which could be either new or interesting ! 



And, truly enough, to have then stayed to investigate 

 the distribution of our native flowers would have excited 

 some feelings of impatience, when we were bent on visiting 

 foreign lands ; but now we look round at their familiar 

 faces again, with the quiet sense o f enjoyment which we 



