But there are other aliens of older settlement amongst us,
aliens of American origin which nevertheless arrived in Britain, in all
probability, long before Columbus ever set foot on the low basking
sandbank of Cat Island. Such is the jointed pond-sedge of the Hebrides,
a water-weed found abundantly in the lakes and tarns of the Isle of
Skye, Mull and Coll, and the west coast of Ireland, but occurring
nowhere else throughout the whole expanse of Europe or Asia. How did it
get there? Clearly its seeds were either washed by the waves or carried
by birds, and thus deposited on the nearest European shores to America.
But if Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace had been alive in pre-Columban days
(which, as Euclid remarks, is absurd), he would readily have inferred,
from the frequent occurrence of such unknown plants along the western
verge of Britain, that a great continent lay unexplored to the westward,
and would promptly have proceeded to discover and annex it. As Mr.
Wallace was not yet born, however, Columbus took a mean advantage over
him, and discovered it first by mere right of primogeniture.
In other cases, the circumstances under which a particular plant appears
in England are often very suspicious. Take the instance of the
belladonna, or deadly nightshade, an extremely rare British species,
found only in the immediate neighbourhood of old castles and monastic
buildings. Belladonna, of course, is a deadly poison, and was much used
in the half-magical, half-criminal sorceries of the Middle Ages.
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