Remarks on the Nationality or Natiwiiy, Denizenship or 
Citizenship of Planis. 
Man, the sole species of the genus Homo, is alone cosmopoli- 
tan. Many other animals are more or less so, and the domes- 
ticated have generally a much wider distribution than the wild 
or unreclaimed. The red grouse of Scotland, Tetrao scotica, is 
peculiar to the British Isles, but it is a rare example of a species 
having a very narrow sphere. Animals of the temperate and 
Arctic regions have a more enlarged range than those that are 
tropical; and most animals are found in more than one country. 
Some migratory birds come here to breed, and having accom- 
plished this, pass the greater part of the year in distant lands. 
These belong to two countries at least, being natives of one and 
inhabitants of another. In this plants are unlike animals—they 
are not migratory ; and the examples of plants confined to one 
country or locality are still rarer than similar examples in the 
animal kingdom. In the human family there is no question 
about the nativity of an individual. He cannot be both Cam- 
brian and Anglican,—he cannot be both a Welshman and an 
Englishman,—he must be either the one or the other; and the 
question is decided by the place of his nativity, the country 
where he was born. When we speak or treat of the nativity of 
animals and plants, we always understand what is, by scientific 
men, called species; we never mean individuals. Hence arises 
the obscurities and misapprehensions among the unlearned when 
they hear the expressions indigenous, naturalized, native, etc., 
applied to plants and to animals. Even the learned experience 
some difficulty in the correct employment of these terms. It 
has been shown that a species (not an individual) in the animal 
kingdom may be common to several countries or kingdoms, and 
that the converse is very rare, that is, where one species, as the 
Scottish grouse, is confined to one country. In the vegetable 
kingdom such examples are still rarer. For example, few spe- 
cies of plants are natives in this narrow or exclusive sense, viz. 
found in one single country and nowhere else. If we estimate 
the spontaneously produced plants of Britain at 1500, we surely 
cannot estimate the pure natives, viz. the plants which grow 
naturally here and nowhere else, at so many as 1-100th part of 
the whole. Is it probable that fifteen plants are exclusively con- 
N.S. (VOL, T. 3 E 
