BOTANICAL NOTES FROM PORTPATRICK. 135 



XI. 

 BOTANICAL NOTES FROM PORTPA TRICK, 1886. 



BY JAMES M* ANDREW. 



[Read 28th December, 1886.] 



During last summer I spent three weeks at Port- 

 patrick, a sea - bathing resort in Wigtownshire, 

 situated on the North Channel. As I was recover- 

 ing from a sprained ankle, I could not ramble far 

 in search of plants, but managed, nevertheless, to 

 see a little of the botany of the neighbourhood. I 

 was rather disappointed with the result. The sur- 

 rounding country is almost entirely agricultural, and 

 to a great extent arable, and has the common weeds 

 of cultivation in abundance. The only wood and glen 

 of any size are at Dunskey, where I found no 

 species of mosses, hepatics, lichens, or flowering- 

 plants, except what are found in almost every glen. 

 The fern vegetation was very luxuriant, and con- 

 sisted almost entirely of forms of Athyrium Filix- 

 fcemina and Nephrodium Filix-mas, intermixed here 

 and there with large patches of Equisetum maxi- 

 mum. I saw no plants of Poly podium Dryoptevis, 

 P. Phegoptems, or Scolopendrium vulgare. In this 

 moist glen of the West Coast I had hoped to find such 

 a moss as Ulota ccdvescens, but with the exception 

 of a profuse growth of Ulota phyllantha, this genus 

 of mosses was nearly absent. The coast both north 

 and south of Portpatrick is very rocky, with the 

 rocks of hard whinstone, and very unsuitable for 

 mosses and lichens. These plants, therefore, were 

 very scarce, with the exception, of course, of Grimmia 

 mavitima, which was abundant. The only new lichen 

 I gathered was Lichina pyg?ncea, growing to the 

 south of the harbour on low rocks washed by the 



