OLD FRIENDS IN DISTANT LANDS 81 



semblant of those of the English country-side, but 

 at other times the real thing. What we call our 

 English plants are naturally often found over a 

 considerably larger area than that of these little 

 British Islands, and some, in fact, are cosmopoli- 

 tan. We have lately seen a list of plants that was 

 compiled by a traveller on the Amoor, and not only 

 did he encounter an abundant store of things wholly 

 unknown in England, but such familiar wild flowers 

 as the lily of the valley, strawberry, dandelion, 

 daffodil, celandine, snowdrop, ox-eye, and the red 

 and white clovers, while in another far-away 

 locality Baluchistan we find amongst other 

 flowers well known to us at home the colum- 

 bine, watercress, shepherd's purse, stork's-bill, the 

 red and white clover again, blackberry, hawthorn, 

 fennel, chicory, sowthistle, toadflax, pimpernel, 

 henbit, and round-leaved mallow. 



In many lands the plants we recognise as British 

 are not indigenous ; their arrival has been one of 

 the unintended results of colonisation or commer- 

 cial intercourse. When railways were first intro- 

 duced into Japan it was found well to sow grass 

 seed imported from England to bind the soil 

 together on the embankments and in the cuttings ; 

 with this came the seeds of various wild plants, and 

 many of these, as the daisy, buttercup, dandelion, 

 have settled down quite happily in their alien 

 surroundings. In 1837 the botanists of the 



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