250 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
than usual. However, in another species, R. Druoetii, Schultz, a 
current of considerable force will not prevent flower-production 
and seed-bearing, as I have witnessed at Shalaford, near Plymouth. 
Might not botanists pursue an enquiry as to the relative ratio of 
water force and a capacity for flower - production in different 
species 1 To other than mathematical minds such a matter must 
appear difficult to investigate and work out ; but surely as facts are 
presented to reason on, and as the age is one of enquiry, there 
should be men able and willing to take up such a question. 
The recent careful attention to comparatively minute differences 
of form and characters in plants has had curious results, so far as 
some of our once universally-recognized "book species "are con- 
cerned. Of the past generation of botanists, every one knew, or 
thought he knew, Callitridie verna, L., the Water Starwort, given 
by Smith in his English Flora (1824) as growing "in ditches, 
ponds, and slow streams everywhere." At length, however, some 
of the so-called verna was found to accord exactly with the 
platycarjja of Continental botanists : some with the hamulata; and 
more recently the old species was further taxed to supply examples 
for a third segregate, C. obtusangula, Le Gall. All these " splits " 
of the original are certainly represented by specimens of the 
neighbourhood of Plymouth, and other portions of Devon and 
Cornwall ; but a doubt still remains, and this is whether there is 
anything left of the old aggregate to stand for the restricted 
modern C. verna, of Lon. Cat., ed. 7 ; C. vernalis it is called in 
Eng. Bot., ed. 3. I inserted it in my Flora of Plymouth on faith 
of a specimen of a plant collected at Flete, and submitted to Dr. 
Boswell. He thought from the fruit it must be called vernalis ; 
but added that he had never before seen it with spathulate leaves. 
It will be seen that even for this specimen some doubt attaches to 
the name, and consequently it remains for a local investigator to 
ascertain positively whether or not true modern Callitriche verna is 
a Devon and Cornwall species, and if so, what is its range. A 
critical botanist might certainly find much work in duly apportioning 
and correctly naming the Callitriche plants of the greater portion 
of the two counties. 
Of the three Eibes species found in Devon and Cornwall pro- 
bably not one is indigenous in Britain; but inasmuch as botanists 
of repute have thought otherwise, the circumstances should be 
noted under which quasi-wild bushes of the gooseberry and our 
