47 
Ordinary Meeting, November 30th, 1886. 
Professor Osborne Reynolds, LL.D., F.R.S., Vice-President, 
in the Chair. 
“ Ranunculus Flammula, Linn., and R. reptans, Linn. ; 
and their connecting links,” by Charles Bailey, F.L.S. 
In their typical states no two species would seem to be 
more divergent than Ranunculus Flammula, L., and R. 
reptans, L,, and yet the series of these plants now before the 
members would show that they are resolvable into one 
super-species through numerous interm^ediate states. 
Ranunculus Flammula is universally distributed over 
the British Islands; it is as much at home in Jersey as in 
the extreme north of Scotland, and its distribution on the 
earth’s surface shows that it is almost universal over the 
northern hemisphere, being absent only from Sicily, southern 
Spain, and similar warm regions. 
Ranunculus reptans, on the contrary, is a rare species in 
our islands ; for a century its only known British station 
was on the shore of Loch Leven, in Kinross ; but, as recently 
as August 1880, Mr. Bolton King found the plant growing 
on the eastern shore of Ullswater, all the way from Pooley 
Bridge to Sand wick, but he could find no examples of it on 
the western shore of this same lake; see Report of the 
Botanical Exchange Club of the British Islands for 1880, 
page 28. 
The specimens of reptans now submitted were collected 
16th July, 1886, on the western shore of Ullswater in the 
small bay where the Glencoin Beck empties itself into 
Ullswater, and on the southern or Westmorland side of 
the beck ; this station is in che same county as the localities 
Proceedings — Lit. & Phil. Soc. — Vol. XXVI. — No. 4. — Session 1886-7. 
