438 EXPLOEATOEY NOTICES TOE SEPTEMBEE. 



One of the most singular parasitical plants that 

 Britain produces, the greater Dodder (Cuscuta euro- 

 pcea), should be diligently sought by the enquiring 

 botanist, just before harvest-time, among peas, beans, 

 or vetches. It is generally considered a very rare 

 plant, though, in fact, when it does occur, it extends 

 itself as if with the most malicious activity. Though 

 often on the look-out for it, it was only in 1840 I first 

 saw it, when, in passing through a field of vetches, at 

 the Berrow, Worcestershire, near the southern termi- 

 nation of the Malvern chain, I was struck with the 

 red appearance of a part of the vetches it was the 

 Dodder, which had enveloped them in an inextricable 

 stringy mass, and had borne them down to the ground 

 in its poisonous embrace, tied like Gulliver's head by 

 every hair. Yet, amidst the red clammy and stringy 

 mass it had formed, the round bosses of delicate wax- 

 like flowers shone with extreme elegance. Since then, 



O ' 



a farmer pointed it out to me in a bean-field, not far 

 from my residence, at Northampton, clasped about 

 some bean-stalks most luxuriantly, but said that it 

 had not occurred there for some years previously. 

 This strikingly illustrates a, remark made by KIEBT 

 and SPEISTCE, in reference to the relations of insects 

 with plants, that " sometimes it happens that only a 

 single opportunity occurs, in a man's life, of seeing 

 certain plants growing wild : such opportunities 

 should never be neglected." * I have often had occa- 

 sion to see the force of this admonition, for so many 

 plants might, like Erica vagans, be justly termed 

 wanderers, that a curious plant undeniably observed 

 in a particular locality one year, may be sought there, 



* KIRBY and SPENCE, vol. iv. p. 507- 



