466 76. LILIACE^. 



accidental finding of stray garden plants as a discovery and 

 addition to British botany. And it is equally to be wished 

 that Mr. Borrer would more frequently afford us the bene- 

 fit of his own experience and judgment, openly and boldly 

 expressed, after visiting the spot of any announced disco- 

 very ; which, it is understood, he so regularly makes a 

 point of doing. To the store of practical experience that 

 must have been thus acquired, Mr. Borrer adds also other 

 important qualifications, which altogether ought to give to 

 his opinion more value and weight than could be accorded 

 to the opinions of any other British botanist, in reference 

 to questions bearing on the nativity of newly-discovered 

 plants, and the genuine character of localities for local or 

 novel species. The announcement of Convallaria bifolia 

 being found in Northumberland, for which there seemed no 

 geographic improbability, resuscitated the overlooked fact 

 of its occurrence in Lancashire, " in Dingley Wood, six 

 miles from Preston, in Aulderness, and in Harwood, near 

 Blackburn, likewise," having been recorded long since by 

 Gerarde. And Mr. Edward Edwards afterwards stated in 

 the Phytologist, i. 579, that the same species had been re- 

 ported indigenous in the woods at Hampstead, in Middle- 

 sex, in Park's ' History of Hampstead ; ' and that he had 

 himself, " in 1835, detected several patches of the plant, 

 apparently well established and really wild, under the shade 

 of fir trees, growing near the highest parts of Caen Wood, 

 between Hampstead and Highgate ; " likewise, that he had 

 found it, a year or two previously, under " fir trees in Aspley 

 Wood, Bedfordshire." The only doubt which arises in 

 respect to these two last-mentioned counties, is, that Mr. 

 Edwards may possibly have mistaken some other plant for 

 the Convallaria bifolia, and more particularly as he writes 

 on the recollection of several years back. 



