86. GRAISUNA. 215 



species. Two instances afforded by this grass may be 

 cited here, in illustration of the little reliance to be placed 

 on records of new discoveries by thoughtless observers or 

 by unfaithful reporters. In the Phytologist, vol. i. p. 

 77.3, Mr. Samuel Gibson reported C. echinatus, as ha-vTiug 

 been found by himself, among other rare plants, in the 

 Vale of Calder, Yorkshire ; but no hint or suggestion was 

 added, by which a reader could be led to infer that the 

 gTass existed there only as a casual straggler in extremely 

 small quantity. Fortunately a request from Mr. Edmond- 

 ston and the Editor of the Phytologist, for specimens of 

 it from Mr. Gibson's locality, elicited the admission that 

 only three specimens had been found by S. Gibson. So 

 again, perhaps with more of youthful thoughtlessness 

 than of bad faith, a record was published to the eifect 

 that Mr. Edmondston had discovered tliis grass " on a 

 barren moor in one of the Shetland Isles ", in the year 

 1840. In the Phytologist for 1843 (i. p. 772) Mr. E. in- 

 formed botanists that he had in that year " re-found 

 Cynosurus echinatus in Bressa, Shetland, about a hun- 

 di-ed yards from where I found it in 1840. I obtained" 

 he continues, " only three small specimens ; but this fact 

 proves the perseverance of the plant in the locality, and 

 shows the propriety of reckoning it in the Scottish Flora." 

 Could any conclusion well be more inconsequential ! 

 Especially too, when we find in the Flora of Shetland by 

 the same writer, that only eight specimens of this austral 

 and annual grass were found in 1840. Suppose the case 

 of these two botanists having died mthout having been 

 induced to publish any more correct account than they 

 had fii'st promulgated ; in that case, the three Yorkshire 

 specimens and the eight Shetland specimens might have 

 caused their chance stations to remain many years in oui- 

 compilations of localities, as if productive of an indefinite 



