286 BOTANISING ON THE EOCKS. ch. xi. 



Here was a case such as is often cited by superficial 

 travellers to show the absence of a moral sense among 

 savage people. This man had no doubt robbed and mur- 

 dered in his youth without the slightest compunction ; 

 but, given the conditions under which the ethical sense 

 could be developed, the result was to produce an individual 

 • morally superior to the majority of those around him. 

 The analogy, so well drawn by Reid, between the moral 

 nature of man and the development of the plant from the 

 seed holds good. External conditions are necessary ; but 

 they do not create the germ, without which no evolution 

 can follow. The conditions vary from one individual to 

 another. One requires to be fostered by many favourable 

 influences ; another, with stronger vitality, will bud forth 

 under the least auspicious conditions. The assertion that 

 there are human beings in whom it is impossible to awaken 

 any sense of difference between right and wrong must be, 

 at least, premature, until the world shall have reached a 

 social condition in which each individual may be tried 

 under appropriate conditions. 



Our day's botanising on the rocks near Seksaoua was 

 successful beyond our expectations. Many conspicuous 

 plants peculiar to Marocco were here seen for the first 

 time. Several of these had been gathered by M. Balansa 

 during the four days which he passed in the adjoining 

 district of Keira, but were known to us only by name. 

 That active and successful botanical traveller was able to 

 collect so few specimens that in several cases no du- 

 plicates were available for distribution, and the speci- 

 mens exist only in the rich herbarium of M. Cosson. 

 Among other novelties we here saw for the first time 

 Trachelium angustifoUum of Schousboe, utterly unlike 

 any other species of that ornamental genus ; Teucrium 

 rupestre and T. bullatum, both described by M. Cosson 

 from Balansa's specimens; and a single specimen of 

 Elceosdinum exinvolucratum of Cosson, a fine umbel- 

 liferous plant, apparently very rare even in its native 



