128 
NATURE NOTES. 
Myosotis, Veronica, and Epilobium, which I should like to lay 
before the readers of Nature Notes. 
Each of these families may for convenience be divided into 
two groups, the water species, and the land species. If then 
we were to find in these distinct and widely differing families 
any feature common to all the aquatic species, and wherein 
they all alike differed from the terrestrial species, it might be 
reasonably concluded that this common feature was the result 
of the watery environment ; and conversely, any feature 
common to the terrestrial species solely would be the result of 
the dry ground. But this is not the case. 
In all our floras we find the Myosotis family divided into 
two main divisions, the first including those species which have 
the hairs on the calyx appressed and which are all aquatic; 
the second the terrestrial species, in which the calyx hairs are 
spreading. In the first division, too, the hairs on the other 
parts besides the calyx are, as a rule, appressed, and are more 
scanty and, on the whole, softer than the rough hairs of the 
second division. In the case of the genus Veronica all the 
British terrestrial species are hairy, though V. serpyllifolia has 
but a slight down on the stem, whilst the three aquatic species, 
scutellata, Anagallis, and Beccabunga are all glabrous. So far, then, 
it would seem that the effect of the water is to lessen the number 
of the hairs and to soften them. But in the genus Epilobium we 
find the reverse of this ; for whereas the Epilobium montanum, so 
common on walls and cottage roofs and in gardens, is, with the 
exception of the slightly pubescent stem, quite glabrous, yet 
the Epilobium hirsutum , though an inhabitant of watery places, 
is thickly hairy all over. Comment hereon is needless. If the 
environment had really anything to do with the modifications 
of plants, we should expect to find at least several varieties of 
such a common species as Veronica Chamcedrys, but I know of no 
varieties of it. Even such a seemingly unimportant characteris- 
tic as the two lines of hairs is always present. It would seem, 
then, from these examples, that as the plants in question were 
created, so they have remained alike uninfluenced by their 
environment and unsubject to that spontaneous and fortuitous 
variation, to which Mr. Darwin attributed the origin of species. 
I should state perhaps, before concluding this article, that 
though I think that no other conclusion can be fairly come to 
from a careful study of the above-mentioned facts, yet there 
are facts which do seem to indicate clearly, that the environ- 
ment is not altogether without some effect on plants. The 
facts are, I believe, on both sides pretty equally balanced. 
Henry St. A. Alder. 
III. A Reply. 
[We have received some other communications on the 
subject of Professor Henslow's theory, which we have not 
space to insert in the present number. In order that each part 
