364 Dr. G. A. Walker- Arnott on Hypericum Anglicum. 



Dr. Balfour's localities are three in number : — banks of the 

 Crinan Canal, Argyleshire, Sept. 6, 1827 ; Culross, Perthshire, 

 July 1833; and Galway in Ireland, Aug. 6, 1838. His speci- 

 mens are very imperfect, but are doubtless specifically the same 

 as mine ; their pedicels and peduncles do not appear to me to 

 be winged. The first of these stations I examined with great 

 care during the month of August of this present year, but found 

 nothing at all resembling the plant of which I was in quest ; but 

 as there are some small gardens there (which, however, I did not 

 search), I am now convinced that it had been cultivated. The 

 second locality is known to abound in ornamental foreign shrubs 

 planted throughout the Valleyfield grounds by the gardener. 

 Of the nature of the third locality I am not qualified to speak. 



My friend Dr. Dickie of Belfast (now Professor of Botany in 

 the University of Aberdeen) having informed me that he had met 

 with what he supposed to be H. Anglicum in the woods at Donard 

 Lodge, at the base of Slieve Donard, near Newcastle, co. Down, I 

 proceeded immediately to Belfast, and accompanied him to the 

 place on the 26th of Sept. Several large bushes of it, some with 

 a woody stem an inch or two in diameter at the base, occurred at 

 a low elevation ; but there were many smaller ones about 500 feet 

 higher up. It had obviously been planted, but whether brought 

 down from the mountain or from a distance remained doubtful 

 until we met the old forester, who assured us that there had been 

 neither a tree nor a shrub there except the Uleoc nanus, var. Gallii 

 (which was everywhere), until he himself planted them, and that 

 he had brought all from a small nursery he had at Castlewellan, 

 a few miles distant. We still clung to the idea that it might 

 have been introduced by him to his nursery from the Slieve; 

 but he as positively asserted that he had procured it, with many 

 others of the ornamental shrubs we saw, about fifty or sixty 

 years ago, from Dickson's gardens at Edinburgh. The Donard 

 plant quite agrees with my specimen marked H. elatum, also with 

 Dr. Balfour's specimens named H. Anglicum by Mr. Babington ; 

 and it also accords with the figure of Androscemum grandifolium 

 of Reichenbach (Fl. Germ. vi. p. 70, t. 352. f. 5193). Reichen- 

 bach mentions that his specimens had been collected in a thicket 

 or shrubbery at Sion in Switzerland, where it must have been 

 cultivated, and also in "Arran, Buteshire." This last, in all 

 probability, had been taken by some tourist from the grounds 

 about Brodick Castle — a place well adapted to it on account of 

 the mildness of the climate, but where it must have been 

 planted. 



I have some doubts about its being the H. grandifolium of 

 Choisy or Androscemum Webbianum of Spach ; but I have not 

 authentic specimens from the Canary Islands to decide that 



