12. CARYOPHYLLACE^. 229 



North limit in Shetland, Orkney, Hebrides. 



Estimate of provinces 18. Estimate of counties 82. 



Latitude 50 — 61. British type of distribution. 



Agrarian region. Inferagrarian — Superagrarian zones. 



Descends to the coast level, in the Peninsula. 



Ascends to 100 and 200 yards, in England. 



Range of mean annual temperature 52 — 46. 



Native. Glareal. Whether we have one, or more than 

 one, species included under the above names, I feel myself 

 quite unable to decide. But whatever may be the final 

 decision on that point, it is now utterly impossible to show 

 the distribution of the several forms, intended by those 

 names, apart from each other. Various botanists have di- 

 vided them into two species, in accordance with the qua- 

 ternary or quinary division of the flowers ; while Mr. Ba- 

 bington, discarding that test, divides them by the more or 

 less membranaceous character of the bracts and sepals, with 

 some other petty distinctions. Thus each one of Mr. Ba- 

 bington's two species, includes portions of two different 

 species, as understood by Smith or Curtis ; so that it be- 

 comes impossible to pair the synonymes, except by frag- 

 ments of species. Besides this difficulty in the way of as- 

 certaining the distribution of the supposed species, seve- 

 rally, we have to filch out some of the individual specimens 

 of semidecandrum and tetrandrum, or of semidecandrum 

 and atrovirens, to make up two other imaginary species, 

 the C. pumilum (Curtis) and C. pedunculatum (Babington). 

 But Mr. Babington has himself now given up his C. pe- 

 dunculatum, both as a species and as a variety ; making it 

 " small by degrees," till finally — nothing. In the ' Maga- 

 zine of Zoology and Botany,' it is figured and described at 

 length as a true species. Four years later, he sinks it into 

 a variety of atrovirens, in the ' Edinburgh Catalogue.' And 

 two years later, again, it is unnoticed in the ' Manual,' al- 



