NOTE ON THE FLORAS OF MR. FORBES. 471 



upon any sound botanical evidence, the second attempt is 

 rendered little better than a burlesque upon the vegetable 

 geography of Britain, by the partial selection of the facts 

 adduced, their inaccuracy or inapplicability, and an in- 

 attention to those climatal requirements of the species, 

 which must of themselves constitute insuperable objec- 

 tions against the soundness of the hypothesis respecting 

 their origin and migrations. In short, considering the 

 small number of the pages in Mr. Forbes's second essay, 

 which are devoted to the botanical bearings of the sub- 

 ject, it absolutely teems with errors in its botany — incon- 

 clusive arguments, inconsequent logic, inept illustrations, 

 and the guesswork of the imagination put forth ostensibly 

 as the ascertained facts of science. 



Taking the two publications in connexion — the first 

 crude paper got up for reading at the British Association, 

 with the more laboured subsequent pages penned for the 

 Geological Survey, their internal evidence would justify a 

 belief that their author was not drawing upon the re- 

 sources of his own acquaintance with botanical nature, 

 when he wrote the paper reported as having been read 

 before the Association. But, for the satisfaction of those 

 minds which can make inferences only from more direct 

 evidences, it may be as well to refer to a record which is 

 entered in the Library loan-book of the Linnean Society, 

 showing that Mr. Forbes actually borrowed a copy of the 

 ' Remarks,' — the work in which the corresponding ' types 

 of distribution ' were originally proposed, — from the So- 

 ciety's library, on the 16th of June, 1845; namely, about a 

 week before the meeting of the British Association at 

 which his first paper on the subject was read. 



With that work before him, slight and sketchy as it is 

 allowed to be, an " ingenious " copyist might have written 

 the paper in less than three liours. But in the absence of 



