in the Isle of Dogs. 45 



u Besides an attention to Natural History in general, a pe- 

 culiar regard to the productions of our own country may be 

 expected from us. We have yet much to learn concerning 

 many plants, which authors copy from one another as the 

 produce of Cheat Britain, hut which few have seen.'" "Of 

 the productions of our own country we ought to make our- 

 selves perfectly masters, as no natural object can anywhere 

 be studied half so well as in its native soil." 



This Discourse was written about fifty years ago ; and al- 

 though since that time so much has been done in the different 

 branches of Natural History, and Botany in particular, in con- 

 sequence of the discoveries which have recently been made in 

 it, has become comparatively anew science, it must be granted 

 that much still remains to be done — that "we have yet much 

 to learn concerning many plants ; " not only those of distant 

 lands, or even the more rare productions of our own country, 

 but also concerning those with whose forms we are most fa- 

 miliar. These " gems of the earth," which, from their being so 

 common, we too much neglect, will, if read aright, be found to 

 display more beauties, and to possess a greater number of inte- 

 resting peculiarities, than we had ' dreamt of in our philosophy.' 



But to the subject. — Whilst botanizing in the Isle of Dogs 

 in June last, in company with my highly respected friend, 

 Mr. Cameron, Curator of the Birmingham Botanic Garden, I 

 observed growing among nettles and brambles on the southern 

 bank of one of the ditches, a considerable quantity of what I 

 thought was Cerastium aquaticum, not in flower ; and I felt 

 so persuaded of its being merely that common plant, that I, 

 for a time, totally forgot the circumstance, and made one bo- 

 tanical visit to the island, without examining, or even thinking 

 of the locality. In the early part of the following August, 

 however, being again botanizing there with another esteemed 

 Birmingham friend, Frederic Westcott, Esq. one of the Hon. 

 Sees, to the Botanical and Horticultural Society, I quite by 

 accident came again to the place where I had before seen 

 what I thought was Cerastium aquaticum. The plant was 

 now in full flower ; and I at once, to my equal surprise and 

 delight, perceived it to be the highly interesting Cucubalus 

 baccifer ; a plant which, although it had occupied a place in 

 every British Flora, and every list of British plants, for a pe- 

 riod of one hundred years, appears never before to have been 

 found wild, or even apparently wild, in any part of the British 

 islands. 



This plant is a native of the south of Europe, and was in- 

 serted by Dillenius, as a British plant, under the name of 

 Cucubalus Plinii, in the 3rd edition of Ray's Synopsis, 267, 



