476 1. RANUNCULACER. 
Ranunculus (fluitans) Bachii, “« Wirtgen.” E. B. 8. 
Provinces ----5-------- 14. Glouc. Staff. Berwick. 
Syn. 11, page 82. Simply as a variety even in Bab. man. 
Ranuneulus (Ficaria) inewmbens, F. Schultz. 
Provinces 1- 3-14. Likely to be found in other provinces. 
Syn. 14. North Devon! Surrey! Near Edinburgh; Eng. bot. 
The differences between this and the commoner divergens are 
not more than are seen between individual examples of Caltha 
palustris or of some other plants with cordate leaves. 
Ranunculus (Flammula) reptans, Linn. 
Province 15. And almost certainly elsewhere also. 
Syn. 15. Cyb.i. 84. This may prove an instructive segregate 
either to the ‘‘ splitters” or to the ‘‘lumpers ” of species. Whether 
the reptans seen at Loch Leven, Kinross, be included or excluded, 
still the extreme forms of F'lammula are so dissimilar that perhaps 
no describing botanist would have ventured to unite them as 
one single species, if only those extremes had been separately 
brought from some different and distant countries, without the 
intermediate links of connexion so plentifully found in this country. 
Is the R. reptans but a short grade farther in the series ?—or, is it 
a ver-species apart? After years of hesitation, Mr. Boswell Syme 
has unintentionally induced me to answer the former alternative of 
the query in the affirmative. In 1869 he kindly sends me a 
plentiful supply of specimens from Loch Leven, the locality from 
which my herbarium before included only a solitary example. 
While it might be difficult to find a clear distinction between some 
of Mr. Syme’s Scottish specimens and the Scandinavian examples 
of ft. reptans, I deem it quite impossible to separate others of them 
from examples of the plant called Flammula pseudo-reptans, 
collected in other localities in Britain; notably so, from a series of 
specimens collected at Coniston, in the Lake province, by Mr. A. G. 
More, one of which is more filiform and reptant, than are several 
of those from Loch Leven. As to the leaves, I have examples 
from Surrey and other counties, with leaves inseparable from those 
of Loch Leven either by shape or by size. On the whole, but 
with only few Scandinavian examples to guide a decision, I think 
the differences between the Scottish and Scandinavian specimens 
rather stronger than are the differences between the Scottish and 
English specimens. It is worth while to note a change between 
the earlier and the more experienced views of Wahlenberg in 
relation to &. reptans. In ‘Flora Lapponica’ he declared it so 
unlike Flammula, that he deemed it nearer akin “affiniorem” to 
R. hyperboreus. But fourteen years later, in ‘Flora Suecica,’ he 
compares it with Flammula only, and writes of it “Itaque quan- 
quam precedenti forsan nimium affinis, tamen est forma valde 
memorabilis.” 
