208 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
only village em rubbish- a. and other unoccupied land near 
towns and villa es, but also sandy commons, sea-shores, 
he eablieatibn of Nyman’s Conspectus has greatly y helped 
towards forming a fairly accurate judgment about geographical 
affinities. Thus, if the Kur uropean distribution of a given species is 
seen to be mainly eastern, the prima facie inference will be against 
its inclusion as a British nati aie But this has to be corrected and 
modified by the known occurrence of a good many “outliers’?; on 
which point Mr. Riddelsdell ee rightly laid great stress 
I think that Mr. Dunn, relying upon herbarium-data ‘and books, 
has sometimes too hastily a assumed that species are native only in 
some distant countries, although frequent in the neighbouring parts 
of Europe ; indeed his general tone strikes me as being a little too 
** academic.’ 
The knowledge of each observer must of course depend mainly 
upon the districts which he has been able to examine personally 
in some detail; in other — his judgment may be guided and 
improved by reading and museum work, but can hardly be decisive. 
For instance, I may (and do) pe Iris spuria as probably in- 
digenous in Lincolnshire, on a and other grounds; nae 
never having botanized in that county, I must admit that su uch 
acce 
Aconitum Napellus L. ave cece no doubt from personal 
knowledge that this is native in sth set, Monmouth, and Gla- 
western counties. If it be pc seaiie of garden origin, how can its 
Prag sat as a well-established Jes eastwards be accounted for? 
two stations known to me it grows with the snowdrop under 
perfectly natural conditio 
éonia corallina Retz. Taking into account the oes ae 
Pes 
of soutien: “outliers ” on the same geological formation, such a 
Helianthemum polifolium and Keleria vallesiana on Brean Dew, 
and Draba aizoides in the Gower Peni insula, the case against its 
wildness on the Steep Holm is not, to my mind, by any means 
overwhelmin 
sone Borei Jord. often looks indigenous in Cornwall, Devon, 
and Som F. capreolata L. also oceurs on coast cliffs and 
sands in ‘nies peaehan ; and I suspect that all our Capreolate may 
be true stag though mere weeds of agriculture dies most 
rassica Sinapistrum Sona I have seen this not uncommonl 
by stream-sides te on the coast in Kent; and was led to consider 
it as an aboriginal species which had spread into cultivated ground, 
most likely veinitieed by foreign se 
ry } ; Wie in the Fen country” 
(Babington). Ihave found this on the banks of the upper Wey, 
Surrey, and of the Rother, West Sussex, and judged it to be as 
little open to objection slit as any other plant. Usually, of course, 
it is a weed - Aceeite 
Lepidium Smithii Hoth As certainly native with us as in 
