248 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



tufts of C. huequalis, almost equalled in size and 

 surpassed in colour by Calocera viscosa. These 

 formed, numerically, a small proportion of the fungi 

 collected in a locality where lichens are almost 

 absent, mosses uot plentiful, and scaleworts are 

 becoming scarce, owing, as I believe, to the im- 

 purity of the atmosphere, and where almost the 

 only flowering plants of much botanical interest are 

 Scutellaria minor and two species of Potamogeton. 



Just as in our native- Entomology, the study of 

 the Hymenoptera, when once fairly entered upon, 

 affords more of biological interest than the study of 

 all the other orders of insects put together ; so I 

 believe it to be with Mycology, as compared with 

 other departments of Botany. 



Henry H. Higgins. , 



A CURIOUS BRITISH PLANT. 



rpHE little plant, of which the accompanying 

 J- figures are illustrations, appears to the writer 

 to possess considerable interest, and to be un- 

 doubtedly a cross or hybrid (and to some extent a 

 fertile one) between the Bilberry or Whortleberry 

 {Vacciiiium myrtillus) and the Cowberry or Red 

 Whortleberry {V. vitis-idaa), though it is but 

 candid to observe that this last point was doubted 

 by several Eellows of the Linnean Society, at one of 

 the meetings of which it was lately exhibited. The 

 following more particular description will, we think, 

 be sufficient to convince any botanist that the plant 

 cau neither be considered as F. myrtillus nor V. 

 vitis-ideea, but must be a cross between the two. 



A large tussuck or clump of the plant was first 

 noticed a few years back in a rather interesting 

 locality in Staffordshire, mentioned in the "Origin 

 of Species," * as an instance where the' fencing and 

 introduction of one plant (the Scotch fir) has pro- 

 duced a remarkable change in a portion of a large 

 and barren heath, which had never before been 

 touched by the hand of man— a change in the 

 relative proportion of the heath plants, in the 

 relative number of other flowering plants, or an 

 excess of them in the inclosed part of the heath, 

 and the advent in it of several insectivorous birds, 

 different from those on the still wild moor. We may 

 ourselves notice the Sirex gigas and S. juvencus 

 amongst insects as having become frequent in the 

 wooded part.f We do not suppose, however, that 

 this change of vegetation has anything to do with 

 the production of the plant in question, and need 

 only add here that all around ,the supposed hy- 

 brid, in society and even in contact with it, is a 



* 1859, p. 71. 



t The hills were planted by Mr. Wedgwood, the cniiiiciit 

 potter, and are called tlic Maer and Camp Hills, the latter 

 name from several Saxcn encampments and mounds situated 

 on their summits. 



profusion of both .the species of Vaccinium above 

 mentioned. 



Even at the first glance it would require a stretch 

 of credulity to suppose, as has been supposed, that 

 a plant with a large sweet black berry, and a flower 

 globular like the glass shades used to cover gas jets, 

 can be a variety of the cowberry, with its smaller 

 crimson acerb berry, and divided patulous flower. 

 We should be rather disposed to appropriate it to 

 the bilberry ; but thence we should be deterred, 

 prima facie, by its non-deciduous leaves, and 

 rounded twigs, so very different from the bilberry's. 



Fig. 174. Hybrid Bilberry. 



To proceed with the description of our plant, the 

 leaves are coriaceous or thick like those of the cow- 

 berry or box, not thin and membranous as in the 

 bilberry, though they are well serrated, like those of 

 the latter plant ; neither are they so blunt and 



