816 REMARKS ON THE ‘CYBELE HIBERNICA.’ 
vidual observers is a very important element in the case for or 
against the admission of a plant to the full honours of nativity. 
ers are only human after all: each of us has his more or less 
of unconscious mental bias, his personal equation, as it may be 
called, and in any work founded, as is the Cybele Hibernica, on the 
i y of a multitude of witnesses, it is unavoidable that the 
editors should — their opinions as to the peculiar quality of each 
witness. No man can be justly charged with presumption for doing 
what his ames requires him to do; and we can only hope that in 
the discharge of our duty as editors we have succeeded in keeping a 
watchful eye on our own peculiar bias, and in avoiding, as we have 
endeavoured to do, anything like partiality or dogmatism in our 
judgments. 
For these reasons we must content ourselves with noticing an 
example or two of what we consider inconclusive argument on Mr. 
Marshall's part. He contends, for instance, on behalf of Iris 
in South Ireland. So expressed, the argument would have some 
force, but must at once give way to the stronger adverse arguments 
drawn from the rarity of the plant in Ireland and the es 
e 
character of the stations it occupies. Again, in th 
Euphorbia Peplis are taxed with hastiness in excluding it 
from the actual flora of Ireland, since, as an ann al, its appear- 
recorded from a single station forty yon’: ago ae never found 
of Sedum album and 8. da asyphyllum, the latter, as Mr. Marshall 
states, being ‘‘ thought by its discoverers to be native in two of its 
Co. Cork stations.” The two discoverers here mentioned must be 
rs Rev. T. Allin, who says it ‘‘appears bint wild,” and our friend 
Mr. Phillips, who says it is found “abundant and looking native.” 
s Quite wild” can only mean “certainly ik somes and “looking 
native surely implies a doubt in ‘the speaker’s mind as to the 
Yet 
of its being an introduced plant; and we can assure Mr. Mar shall 
that in this, as in many other one we have not thought it 
necessary to encumber the pages of the new edition of Cybele 
