The cultivation on the Riviera of flowers for sale as “cut flowers” in Paris, London, and Berlin, in the colder months of the year, is now an enormous business, bringing many thousands of pounds yearly to the small gardeners around Hyères, St. Raphael, Nice, and Mentone. Roses, violets, carnations, “mimosa” of various kinds, anemones, lilies, and narcissus are sent literally in tons by quick trains several times a week from these realms of sunshine to the dreary North. The commencement of this trade was due to the suggestion made some fifty years ago by Alphonse Karr, the French poet and journalist, who had a beautiful garden of his own at St. Raphael, and found that he could produce flowers in profusion through the winter. Two years ago I visited this garden (which now belongs to a French painter) at the beginning of April, and found it full of interesting flowers and shrubs, enormous bamboos, palm trees, some twenty different “mimosas,” eucalyptus of several species, camellia trees, and rose-bushes in quantity. The influence of man on the vegetation of a favoured locality like the Riviera is more striking than in the North. But it is worth remembering that the most familiar tree in England—the common elm—is not a native, but introduced from South Europe. Our native elm is the wych-elm, or mountain elm—a much handsomer tree, in the opinion of many, than the so-called “common elm.” There are doubts as to whether both the spruce and the larch were not introduced by man at a very remote time, so that the Scotch fir would be our only aboriginal pine. The oak, beech, birch, ash, hawthorn, poplar, and alder are undoubted native English trees. The holly-oak or evergreen oak, the sycamore, plane-tree, sweet chestnut, horse chestnut, walnut, and probably the lime or linden tree have been introduced by migrating men at various periods into our islands. With the exception of rye and oats none of the plants which we cultivate for food are derived from our own wild plants, and none of our domesticated animals have been produced from native wild kinds. VIII FRESH-WATER JELLY-FISHES