42 
NATURE NOTES. 
arrac A eyojueva, its words which occur once and once only in 
the whole range of classical literature, and they are a source 
often of perplexity and speculation, always of interest to the 
linguistic scholar. Such are our plant rarities, utterly puzzling 
as to how they came there and why they confine themselves 
to that locality, but a source of inexpressible delight to the 
botanist who comes upon them and sees them growing in the 
habitat of their choice. 
My first puzzle is the existence of what I can only describe 
as natural Botanic gardens in certain favoured spots in Britain. 
In North Britain there are three of the first class: Ben Lawers 
with the neighbouring Breadalbane mountains, the Clova 
mountains, or Braes of Angus, in Forfarshire, both of which 
contain within a very limited geographical area the most 
astonishing collection of rare plants of all sorts, and the south- 
west corner of Aberdeenshire, i.e., Craigindal, Cairngorm, 
Lochnagar and their glens, to which we must add, as nature 
gardens of the second class, West Sutherland, Arran (for ferns), 
and, perhaps, the Lowther Hills round Moffat. In England, 
the choicest spots that, like Ben Lawers, swarm with rarities 
are (best of all) Upper Teesdale ; then the Craven district of 
West Yorkshire, North Northumberland, the heart of the Lake 
district, Snowdonia, including Orme's Head and Anglesea, 
and the extremity of the Cornish Peninsula. While to the 
second rank belong Kent and Sussex for orchids, the Surrey 
Hills, the New Forest, the neighbourhood of Cambridge, and 
Shropshire with the district of the Meres. My enumeration is 
not exhaustive, but enough to illustrate my point, viz., that 
Flora seems unequally to have distributed her favours, and in 
doing so to have acted capriciously, and on no assignable 
principle. 
Let me take you to some of these floral centres, and intro- 
duce to you a few of their treasures that it has been my good 
fortune to see there growing. For in this paper I prefer to 
confine myself almost entirely to rare plants that I have myself 
observed or gathered, whose environment and conditions of 
growth I have myself carefully noted. I begin with Ben 
Lawers and pass over the floral treasures which attract atten- 
tion, whether by their surpassing beauty or their rarity, such 
as Polystichum Lonchitis, which abounds in every fissure, and 
flourishes like so many thistles, under ever}’ projecting stone 
all over the amphitheatre which encloses Loch-a-Cat ; Silene 
acaulis, with its cushion of starry pink blossoms ; Potentilla 
alpcstris, with its masses of golden yellow; Veronica saxatilis, 
with its large purple blue corolla (an easily cultivated rock 
plant, I may observe in passing, and one which amply 
repays the care expended on its comfort). I may here also 
parenthetically observe that while Veronica saxatilis is fairly 
frequent on Ben Lawers, and Veronica alpina in the Clova Glens, 
I never, in spite of diligent search, found a specimen of V. alpina 
on Lawers, or of V. saxatilis in Clova. 
