Floras of Great Britain and Central Europe. 247 
in Germany we should expect to see a much greater variety of both 
trees and shrubs. I never saw in England that delightful mixture 
of various trees presented by a mid-German valley traversed by a 
murmuring brook, where behind the alders ( A Inns glutinosa and 
A. incana —the latter absent from England) the hornbeam (Carpinus 
Betulus) is mixed with Acer platanoides or Pseudoplatanus, Ulmus, 
Tilia and Sorbus Aucuparia, on the valley sides giving place to 
closed beechwoods with Picea and Abies , and making way for Pinus 
silvestris on the steeper and drier slopes. But instead, the beautiful 
ashwoods are highly developed in England, as I only remember to 
have seen them here and there on basaltic hills or in East Prussia. 
Ulmus , Popidus tremula and Corylus are generally present in England 
as in Germany, and at higher altitudes Sorbus Aucuparia becomes 
more important. Ilex and Hedera betray the west-European 
influence by their abundance in the lower layers, even far to the 
north. 
Many of the species, both of the woods, and of the open copses, 
scrub, and commons, which in England are known as south-western, 
have a very different distribution on the Continent. Two examples 
are Daphne Laureola and Litliospermum purpureo-cceruleum , both 
absent from Ireland. D. Laureola is distributed from Devon north¬ 
wards to York and Durham. Besides France, Aragon, North Italy 
and southern Switzerland, the area of these two species extends 
far into the south-east of Europe—Austria, Hungary, Slavonia, 
Herzegovina, Bosnia, Servia and southern Russia, so that many 
such species are reckoned in Germany as “ south-eastern ” ! Daphne 
Laureola, however, is typically absent from the whole of Germany 
as far as Austria and the Swiss Jura. But other species are 
specifically south-western, extending from Spain to Holland and 
East Friesland : e.g., Endymion nutans=Scilla non-scripta, of whose 
abundance in England, even in the northern woods, we often had 
striking evidence. 
While always bearing in mind this strong western character, 
even in the south-east of England, we can say, then, that the south 
British plant-formations, wood, low calcareous hill-flora with scrub, 
lowland meadows, and lowland heaths on peaty soil, are constructed 
very much as would be the case if low calcareous hills were present, 
say, in south Hanover on the edge of the north-west German moor 
and swamplands. 1 am thinking, for instance, of the scenery of 
South Hampshire, such as Beaulieu Heath and the beautiful 
beechwoods on the higher ground of the New Forest, with Ruscus 
