HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



sister and I brought away some exquisite specimens 

 from Hafod, also from the Eglwyseg rocks, &c. At 

 the " World's End " we found very fine Productus. 

 In a quarry near the canal, guided there by Mr. 

 W. B. Hardy, we found most interesting upper 

 Silurian bivalves among the slates ; but, although we 

 searched diligently, we could only find small pieces 

 of trilobites. Barber's Hill, and all the other lovely 

 mountains were clothed in the richest and most 

 brilliant autumnal tints, and as we had some 

 showery days, rainbows seem to reflect themselves 

 on every mountain-top. The river Dee tumbled 

 and foamed, and sounded as merrily in its autumn 

 tones to us as in its summer voices to Dr. Taylor. 

 Wild flowers and ferns gladdened our eyes everywhere, 

 our only difficulty being the Welsh tongue. Often in 

 our ten or twelve or fourteen mile walks we needed 

 guidance, but had to follow signs — the country folks 

 could not understand us, nor we them ; the louder 

 they shouted, the more we laughed. 



Of course, we put up at the Royal Hotel, and 

 found the host and hostess most attentive. No one 

 should visit Llangollen without going to the Royal 

 Hotel. 



For several weeks we remained in North Wales, 

 seeing many beautiful spots. Barmouth, with its 

 exquisite Panorama Walk ; Glandovey, with its far- 

 famed valley ; Dolgelly with its splendid mountains, 

 the old Cader Idris towering above them all ; 

 Aberystwith, with the wonderful Falls at the Devil's 

 Bridge, &c. But we returned home by Llangollen 

 again, and concluded no spot could be fairer than 

 this little paradise, so truly and beautifully described 

 by our Editor last summer. 



Fanny M. Hei.e. 

 Bristol. 



DWARF ELDER OR DANE'S-BLOOD. 



IN the January part of the P. M. S. Journal, at 

 p. 12, it is stated, regarding the. 4 nemone Pulsa- 

 tilla, pasque anemone or pasque flower, so called 

 because it flowers about Easter time; that "there 

 is a legend that this flower only grows where Danish 

 blood was spilt. From such names as ' Woeful 

 Dane's Bottom,' one might certainly conclude that 

 fierce battles may have been fought with the Danes 

 in the neighbourhood of Minchinhampton." And 

 the writer of the article then gives two original verses, 

 embodying this statement which is quite new to me. 

 I have always heard the legend told about another 

 plant, the dwarf elder {Sambucus ebulus) which is 

 called in Smith's English Flora, Hooker's Flora, and 

 Bentham's Flora, "Danewort." 



In the first of these works is this passage in ex- 

 planation of the name, — "Our ancestors evinced a 

 just hatred of their brutal enemies the Danes, in 

 supposing the nauseous fetid and noxious plant before 



us to have sprung from their blood." And in a 

 modern book, entitled "Flower Lore," pp. 233, the 

 writer, whose name does not appear, says : "The 

 dwarf elder is said only to grow where blood has 

 been shed either in battle or in murder. A patch of 

 it grows on ground in Worcestershire, where the first 

 blood was drawn in the Civil War between the 

 Royalists and the Parliament. The Welsh call it 

 Llysan gzuaed gwyr, or plant of the bloody man ; " a 

 name of similar import is its English one of deathwort. 

 It is chitfly in connection with the history of the 

 Danes in England that the superstition holds, 

 wherever the Danes fought and bled there did the 

 dwarf elder, or Dane's blood spring up and flourish. 

 It is a well-known fact that if ground be deeply 

 stirred or cleared by fire, plants grow up often of a 

 species previously unknown to the district. The 

 Bartlow Hills in Cambridgeshire were raised in 

 memory of the Danes who fell in the battles fought in 

 1016, between Cnut and Edmund Ironsides. It is 

 probable that the danewort may have been there 

 observed for the first time- ; and what so natural as to 

 connect the new-found plant with the blood of the 

 fallen Danes ?" 



The dwarf elder is not a common plant, but 

 wherever found it is mostly abundant. I have never 

 heard any legend about it in Ireland. Among 

 several of its localities with which I am acquainted 

 in Ulster, by a strange coincidence, there are two 

 which quite corroborate "the legend of its bloody 

 origin," one is the earthen fort of Rathmore, near the 

 town of Antrim, where, according to Bede's Hist. 

 Eccl., as cited by Keating, Egfrid, king of the 

 Northumbrians, fought a battle with the Picts in 

 a.d. 684 ; and the other is Moira the modernised 

 form of pronouncing Magheath, where one of the 

 most momentous battles ever fought in Ireland 

 occurred a.d. 637, between the exiled Congal Cloan 

 and Donald, king of Ireland, resulting in the defeat 

 of the rebels and invaders. 



H. W. Lett, M.A. 



NIDIFICATION IN STAFFORDSHIRE. 



I HAD the pleasure of finding, at Sandon, on 

 June 9, 1879, the nest of the pied fly-catcher 

 (Muscicapa atricapilla) ; it contained six eggs, partly 

 incubated. The nest, composed of dried grasses, 

 moss, roots, and feathers, was placed against the 

 gnarled side of a pollard oak, underneath an over- 

 hanging branch. 



The hawfinch {Coccothraustcs vulgaris) I usually 

 find nesting at Sandon ; a friend has found it at 

 Eccleshall ; and at Swynnerton, where it was formerly 

 scarcely ever seen, it is now becoming comparatively 

 common ; the gardener there tells me it is very 

 troublesome, being very fond of peas. In the season 

 it destroys more of them than any other bird. 



