778 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



side of the Greek Archipelago which no naturalist would divide or 

 bifurcate, nor, I imagine, has the Greek Archipelago existed in 

 its disconnecting discontinuity as long as the species jEscmIus 

 hippocastanum. 



The sycamore is another undoubtedly non-indigenous tree, but 

 it is thoroughly naturalised and abundant in certain parts of 

 England ; and notably in the Lake District it forms a very 

 characteristic feature of the landscape, when it is massed round the 

 equally distinctive old farm-houses. In the Lake District its 

 leaves have assumed a somewhat darker colour than they ordinarily 

 bear in the southern and midland counties ; and its bark often 

 exhibits what some naturalists would call a mimetic analogy to 

 that of its fellow-countryman the Oriental plane. The sycamore 

 has yet other claims upon our attention^ as the readiness with 

 which its seeds take root might have long ago destroyed, even to 

 the eyes of the least observant, that ' idolon theatri molestissimum 

 et ineptissimum ' which taught that if a plant could be proved to 

 be non-indigenous in a country it was useless to expect it to 

 flourish there ^ 



1 will now turn to the Coniferae. In another place 2, I drew 

 attention to the well-known and universally accepted fact, that till 

 comparatively recent times the Scotch fir (Finns syhestns)^ the 

 yew {TaxMS haccata) and the juniper {Jimijoenis communis), had been 

 the only representatives in these islands of the natural order 

 Coniferae. I did not dwell then, and I will not dwell now, upon 

 the greatness of the difference which has, in the last three hundred 

 years, been effected in the general aspect of our country by our 

 successive importations of the spruce, the larch, and the silver fir 

 from other European countries, and the multitudinous trees be- 

 longing to the same order from North America, from North India, 

 from California and Mexico, from Japan, from China, and from 

 Chili, the names of which ' plants of the fir tribe suitable for the 



^ For an example of the operation of this notion, so opposed to the most obvious 

 facts, see ' Viti (Fiji), by Berthold Seemann,' p. 426, where, apropos of the statement 

 • the cotton plant is not indigenous in Fiji,' we have the following note : — 



* Most of the newspapers took this fact to be a serious drawback to the successful 

 cultivation of cotton, quite forgetting that cotton is not indigenous to the United 

 States and many other countries in which it flourishes. I made exactly the same 

 statement (cotton is not indigenous in Fiji), but added that, notwithstanding, it had 

 become almost wild in some parts, so well is the country adapted for its growth.' — B.S. 



2 'British Barrows/ p. 724. Article XVII, pp. 326. 



