906 Proceedings of the Boyal Soeiety 
Committee, in their Second Re^port (for 1874, p. 197), refer in these 
terms : — 
Mr James Plant reports both “ isolated boulders and groups of 
boulders, and be records one remarkable fact of especial importance, 
viz., that a group of boulders bad been exposed in an excavation 
made in Leicester, 25 feet deep, composed of rocks, which Mr Plant 
failed to recognise as British.’’ 
If this testimony be verified, the fact would be in pari cases with 
the case of the three plants * found in the Hebrides and the west 
coast of Ireland, but unknown in any other part of Europe, whose 
native habitat is Boreal America, and whose transportation to our 
shores the late Professor Edward Forbes did not hesitate to ascribe 
to floating ice {Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 
vol. i.). 
Finally, it may be asked, if the theory of an oceanic current with 
floating ice be adopted to account for most of the boulders in Scot- 
land, especially those on the west and north-west coasts, — from 
what country could the boulders have come, and what could have 
produced this current ? 
The Committee, though not acknowledging the impossibility of 
suggesting an answer to this question, think that were they to 
venture on doing so, they would be trespassing beyond the objects 
of their appointment. Their proper province has been simply to 
collect facts bearing on boulders in Scotland, embracing their 
distribution, their positions, and the agencies probably concerned 
in their transport. To explain the source or origin of these 
agencies, or, in other words, to unravel the conditions of the earth’s 
previous history, so as to account for these agencies, is a problem 
the solution of which must be left to others. 
The names of these plants are Eriocaulon se;ptangulare, Neottia gemmipare, 
and Sisyrinchium anceps. 
