438 X. GENERAL KEMAEKS. 



austral, the highest or the lowest localitj'^ has really been 

 ascertained. And in a country like Britain, where man 

 has so much intermeddled with nature, there is too fre- 

 quently a further uncertainty whether the most outlying 

 localities ascertained are natural or artificial, unaltered or 

 altered by human agency. Admitting the nativity of 

 Viola odorata, Vinca minor, Daphne Laureola, and various 

 other plants frequently kept in gardens, their present 

 most northerly localities in Britain are certainly not 

 native stations ; and who can now say with any confi- 

 dence, at which of their localities the natural limits of 

 their areas or ranges are to be fixed ? 



4. How are the inequalities of distribution to he ex- 

 plained ? — The census of species was founded primarily on 

 the 38 sub-provinces, and secondarily on the 112 comital 

 (including therewith the vice-comital) sections. If com- 

 plete floral lists could be obtained for each and all of the 

 113 sections, the names of many of the species would 

 likely be preceded by that figure instead of 99, as the 

 highest figure in the comital series ; the first group in 

 the general census list then graduating from no. 113 

 downwards ; the second grouj) from a higher no. than 94 ; 

 and so on. But taking that list as it now stands, with 

 the commonest plants made to seem less generally dis- 

 tributed than they truly are, through habitual neglect of 

 them, it still suffices to show very wide inequalities in the 

 areas and diff'usion of the species. 



Although this fact had not before been brought into 

 view so decidedly and clearly by a series of numerical 

 figures, every young botanist has eaiiy in his studies 

 become familiar with the general idea, that some such 

 inequalities do exist. He has at any rate acquired some 

 vague notions about " rare" and " common" plants. And 



