262 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Cornwall, and at his request the Rev. J. Thompson paid particular 
attention to it." (Vol. ii. p. 369.) Dawson Turner wrote of it ; 
" Unless it suffer very material alteration from culture, which I 
understand it does not, it appears to me to have as clear a right to 
be considered a species as any one in our Flora." As opposed to 
this view take the following statements, based on actual experiment, 
from the exact and critical "Watson : " Seeds (of gummifer) sown 
in a Surrey garden two different years in each case produced 
D. Carota only ; one set of the seeds brought by myself from the 
coast of Jersey, ^the others given to me by Dr. Boswell Syme. 
Besides this direct change, intermediate forms occur on the coast ; 
while on inland examples of Carota, growing on dry exposed ground, 
the umbel occasionally remains perfectly convex in fruit." C.C.B. 
520. Dr. Boswell, after speaking of marks of dissimilarity between 
ordinary Carota and gummifer, says, " These differences, however, 
though they apply to the Cornish and Devon plants, do not to those 
of the Kentish coast, which are quite intermediate between the 
Cornish and the inland forms, passing insensibly into the latter, and 
yet approaching too closely to var. a " (the type) "to be separated 
from it." My own experience in our neighbourhood, however, has 
been very similar to that of Dr. Boswell on the coast of Kent ; for 
I have sometimes been at a loss to understand where Daucus Carota 
genuina ends and D. gummifer begins. We often find specimens of 
other species besides the Carrot showing a tendency to produce un- 
usually thick and fleshy leaves when growing on maritime cliffs 
exposed to sea gales, and we can imagine such leaves to be less 
liable to become bruised or scorched by fierce winds and saline 
influences than those of thinner or more ordinary texture. 
Advocates of natural selection views might allege, certainly with 
probability, an evolution of thick-leaved individuals from their 
being best suited to the spots. The proved reversion, however, of 
this thick-leaved maritime variety to the ordinary form in only one 
generation seems to show that in the Carrot at least there is no 
passage by inheritance of peculiar characters away from the con- 
ditions under which they arose. 
Careful observation of the circumstances under which two other 
species of the Umbelliferce, Fceniculum vulgar e, Gaert., the Com- 
mon Fennel, and Smyrnium Olusatrum, L., Alexanders, are found 
at various spots are desirable, in order to the arriving at conclusions 
as to their position in the flora as indigenous species or otherwise. 
