8 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 



acquainted with the special facts of vegetable distribution 

 in Britain and Europe, than were the geologists and ge- 

 neral botanists, who unwisely committed themselves to 

 wholesale eulogy of an essay so deceptive and inaccurate. 

 Although blundering and false in its botanical illustra- 

 tions, and perhaps not less untrue in some of its zoologi- 

 cal assertions, that treatise by Edward Forbes may still 

 be allowed to have evinced remarkably suggestive concep- 

 tions of science, larger and more comprehensive than 

 those which have characterised the writings of English 

 botanists, present or past, with extremely few exceptions. 



There is one part of that treatise which accords so 

 closely with known facts, otherwise of difficult explana- 

 tion, as to warrant ideas of its possible soundness ; 

 namely, that which connects the mountain floras of Bri- 

 tain and North Europe with the northern drift, and dates 

 these and the mountain floras of Middle Europe from the 

 glacial period. Whether this was honestly his own origi- 

 nal idea, not adopted from the hints of Lyell, it is unne- 

 cessary here to discuss. It seems, indeed, to have been 

 really the basis of the whole treatise ; the rest being 

 merely a fanciful superstructure of mere guesswork piled 

 upon it. His three first so-called floras or types were 

 illustrated quite inaccurately ; the facts tardily used in 

 illustration being misunderstood and misapplied, so as 

 almost to have become mis-statements, by passing through 

 the remodelling process of their plagiarist, after having 

 been taken without acknowledgment from other and more 

 true observers. 



Yet there is really a local or geographico-botanical 

 basis for these alleged floras, as rudely put forth by the 

 preseijt writer, many years previously (1836), in his earlier 

 work, the Remarks. But the facts are incorrectly used by 

 Forbes ; and if correctly stated, the best of them will 



