1858.] PLANTS OP PERTH, 577 



could convince. I last year saw the plant in a living state^ 

 and at once the difference of the two plants^ growing side by- 

 side, was evident to the most casual observer. I will not obsti- 

 nately maintain it is P. hirta, but if not it must be P. erecta* 

 only I am inclined to consider it the former. They are both 

 European plants, the former a native of the south of France, 

 the Pyrenees and Silesia, and flowers from May to September ; 

 the latter indigenous to Germany and the south of Europe, 

 flowering in June and July. It is here, however, spread over 

 an area of nearly an acre, and, as far as I have discovered, 

 there may be from fifteen to twenty plants, varying in height 

 from one to two feet, the lai'ger plants often sending up six 

 or eight large stems, with the flowers in large, erect, corymbose 

 panicles. Should any botanist visit this locality, I shall be 

 happy to let him have a look at it, in order to have a specimen 

 or two. Provided he leaves the root he can take the branches. 

 This I say for the benefit of others. It is very ungracious of 

 any botanist to root up any rare plant ; besides, it is seldom 

 found necessary to have recourse to the root for the discrimina- 

 tion of species. How the plant reached this spot, so far from 

 - its botanical centre, as a botanical geographer might say, or by 

 what agency it was brought, are questions which I am unable to 

 settle. The plant is here, as any one may see, and " seeing is 

 believing." 



4. Sedum dasyphyllum. — This plant is considered by many 

 eminent botanists of the present day to be an alien, or a 

 stranger in the British Isles. From this oj)inion I dissent. 

 It occurs in the neighbourhood of Perth, under circumstances 

 and in a situation very unfavourable to such a conclusion. It 

 exists here on an elevated, rocky moor of no great extent, 

 about three-quarters of a mile south-west of this town, Perth, 

 and grows along witli S. acre and Ornithopus perpusillus on 

 the elevated, rocky knolls of trap rock scattei'cd here and there 

 over a great part of this barren eminence. Excepting these three 

 plants, and stunted bushes of the Ulex europaeus, and some 

 dwarf examples of Erica cinerea, etc., few other exogenous 

 plants find here even a precarious existence, so bleak, exposed, 

 and deficient of soil is this miniature wilderness. A few Lichens 



* It is a stouter and hairier plant than any form of P. erecta seen by the 

 annotator. 



N. S. VOL. II. 4 E 



