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rising water floats them off, and a westerly breeze driving them 

 across the narrow channel leaves them stranded on the low shores 

 of the North Bull as the tide ebbs. Then the fragments, with 

 vital powers noways impaired by a few hours' immersion, are swept 

 by the winds across the smooth, low, sandy tracts, until finally 

 arrested by the fringe of Psamma along the outer or sea-edge of the 

 bank they are rapidly buried there under drifting sand. A rain- 

 shower or two, a few days of genial warmth, and the aggressive 

 vitality of the plant do the rest; and the stranger from the 

 remote Kamtschatkan peninsula has fairly established a colony on 

 the shores of Ireland. 



Has Artemisia Stelleriana a future before it in Western Europe, 

 or is it doomed to succumb in its struggle with the natives ? We 

 can hardly hazard an answer to this question until we learn whether 

 it has succeeded in making good its footing in other parts of the 

 British Isles; but this much seems tolerably clear, that on the 

 North Bull it has held its own for some ten years, and has some- 

 what extended its range. For if its first settlement here was 

 derived from Saint Anne's, as there is every reason to suppose it 

 was, it cannot have reached the sand-hills later than the year of its 

 expulsion from the gardens, unless we assume it to have first 

 established itself at some intermediate point. For such an as- 

 sumption there is at present no evidence ; and if it should be 

 objected that a plant so long established must have been earlier 

 observed by botanists, I can only refer to the reasons so well 

 pleaded by Prof. Areschoug in meeting a similar objection in the 

 case of the Skanian station. On further inquiry, moreover, I find 

 that the first discovery of the plant on the North Bull must be 

 referred to a date a year earlier than that given at p. 22, i. e., to 

 1891, and not 1892. It was in the former year that Miss A. G. 

 Kinahan first found the plant in vigorous growth on the sand-hills, 

 and took cuttings for her garden, a year before Mr. G. B. Moffat 

 had noted it at a point three hundred yards distant. 



MIDDLESEX MOSSES. 

 By John Benbow, F.L.S. 

 The list of Mosses appended to the Flora of Middlesex is so 

 deplorably meagre that any addition to it is to be welcomed; 

 indeed, the following contribution, though small enough, amounts 

 to about one- third of the number at present recorded. The species 

 enumerated below were all, with one exception, collected in the 

 extreme north-west angle of the county, between Uxbridge and the 

 junction of the Herts and Bucks boundaries at Spring well, a strip 

 of about seven miles in length, and from one to two miles in breadth. 

 It is much to be wished that other districts were similarly searched 

 by local collectors, in which case it is reasonable to infer that the 

 list would be still further and materially enlarged. I am greatly 



