Mr. Babington on a New English Species of Urtica. 195 



1829, Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. ii. p. 394. In the Belfast News- 

 letter of Dec. 20, 1831, the following paragraph appeared: — 

 "In the early part of last month a beautiful specimen of the 

 Bohemian wax-wing {Bombycilla Bohemica, Briss.), was shot 

 in Newtownlimavady. It was perched upon a rowan tree in 

 a garden, and seemed busily employed in picking off the ber- 

 ries ; many of them were found in its craw when it was 

 opened/ 5 In the collection of Dr. R. Graves of Dublin, I have 

 seen one which was killed in Ireland. On Feb. 6, 1835*, an 

 extremely beautiful individual of this species was shot in a gar- 

 den at Ballymacarret, in the suburbs of Belfast, and on the 

 following day another was seen at the same place. The former, 

 which came under my inspection, proved on dissection to be 

 a female ; its stomach, which I did not examine until the 10th, 

 four days after its death, was entirely filled with the hairs of the 

 white-thorn (Cratayus Oxyacantha), which possessed an odour 

 as fresh as if just plucked from the tree. Each wing exhibited 

 six plumelets, with their scarlet wax-like adornments; some 

 authors have described the female as wanting these altogether, 

 and the greatest number I have seen attributed to her are four 

 or five. (Temm.) In a few other instances, but without par- 

 ticulars, I have had reports of the wax-wing's occurrence in 

 Ireland. 



XIX. — On a New Enylish Species of Urtica. By Charles 

 C. Babington, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., &c. 



At a recent meeting of the Cambridge Ray Club my atten- 

 tion was drawn (by the Rev. Dr. Jermyn,) to the fact, that two 

 very distinct plants existed in our native herbaria under the 

 name of Urtica pihdifera, Linn., and I can only account for 

 our not having previously observed their differences from the 

 circumstance, that English specimens of the true plant of Lin- 

 naeus do not exist in the collections of Cambridge botanists. 



Upon further examination I was much pleased by finding 

 that one of these plants was the true U. pilulifera, and that 



* Just at this time a specimen was mentioned in the papers to have been 

 shot near Alcesterin England. 



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