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streets of your own town. So in the case of our present 
unwelcome visitor, before one can ask the question—whence 
he came? we ought to be satisfied that he really is a stranger. 
Now, some botanists seem to think that he has all along . 
been a native of these islands, but has “ made himself so 
scarce” as not to have been previously recognized by our 
- Botanical Detective Force ;* while others pronounce him an 
unmistakeable foreigner—greedy and rapacious, “ fixin” 
himself in John Bull’s rivers for all the world as if he had as 
good a right to occupy them as the aborigines themselves. 
For my own part I have no sort of doubt upon the subject: 
I hold with the watermen that he is a veritable ‘ foreigner,” 
although I find that the Rev. Mr. BLoxam, who had visited 
its place of growth, said in 1848, “ he could find no reason 
to doubt its being a true native ;” and Mr. Kir, who first 
regarded it as introduced, afterwards changed his views, and 
concluded it must be indigenous, “ from its simultaneous 
appearance in so many localities.”t Whatever Mr. BLoxam’s 
reasons were for his opinion, Mr. BaBINGTON appears to 
have agreed with him at that time. If, however, Mr. BLoxam 
thought so, only because “ numbers of other water-plants 
grew in the same locality,” the reasoning is very unsatis- 
factory, seeing that any introduced water-plant must necessa- 
rily be found in company with other water-plants. The 
other argument derived from its “ simultaneous appearance 
in so many localities,” loses much of its force, when the 
numerous localities come to be reduced, as I shall hereafter 
shew, to one, or at most two. I have already stated that the 
_ plant was 8 first found in 1842, in the Lock at Dunse Castle, 
* The plant is so unlike any of gl British water-plants, that it could not 
possibly have oe ih overlooked. There is but one plant, the “ Potamogeton 
densum,” that could ever be mistaken for i . and this only by the most super- 
er. 
I have since ascertained that Mr. BLoxam’s “ opinion has long been chan- 
ged as regards its eing a native,” but that Mr. Kirk still “ most decidedly 
considers it indigenou 
