252 WILD FLOWERS OF 



yiola littoralis), Grlabrous Hup ture- Wort (JTerniaria 

 fflabra), Whorled Knot-grass (Illecebrum verticilla- 

 tiim), Summer's Lady's Traces (Neottia cestivalis), 

 Butcher's Broom (JRtiscus aculeatus'), and various others. 

 The Eastern counties of England possess many plants 

 peculiar to that side of our island, as the Scarlet 

 Horned Poppy (Glauciivm PJicenicewn), Smooth Sea 

 Heath (FranJcenia Itevis), Spanish Campion (Silene 

 Otites), Yellow Sickle Medick (Medicago falcata), 

 Eield Medick (M. arvensis), Mossy Tillaea (T. muscosa), 

 Field Southernwood (Artemisia campestris), Fen Hag- 

 wort (jSenecio paludosus), Purple Cow-wheat (Melam- 

 pyrutn arvense), Water Soldier (Stratiotes aloides), &c. 

 The geographical botanist tracing these plants to their 

 continental centres (for the Flora of Britain is almost 

 entirely derivative), is enabled to place them with 

 larger assemblages, and thus provinces of plants on an 

 extended scale (perhaps centres of creation) are esta- 

 blished. By such observations the boundaries of 

 philosophic botany are enlarged, while the observer 

 perceives a new interest investing the habitats of 

 plants, eliciting constant enquiry and inciting to ever 

 renewed investigation. 



I remember showing a friend the rare British Woad 

 (Isatis Tinctoria), growing on a red marl cliff close to 

 the Eiver Severn, above Tewkesbury ;* but if my good 



* This tall plant, which has a very splendid aspect when in flower, is of 

 rare occurrence in a wild state, but flourishes somewhat profusely on the 

 precipitous marl cliff at the Mithe Tout, an ancient Biitish Tumulus by 

 the side of the Severn, above Tewkesbury. At the time alluded to in the 

 text, when with the friend referred to, I gathered several noble specimens, 

 six feet in height. Some had double stems and above twenty compound 

 branches in each panicle of flowers. Most of these branches had more 

 than twelve branchlets, each having about eighty blossoms, so that these 

 magnificent adornments of the native Flora of Britain, each bore nearly 

 twenty-four thousand single flowers! The authors of Floras and Cata- 



