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and cart was passing by, and with his aid the heavy mass, 

 about i^ cwt. I should imagine, was lifted and hoisted into 

 the cart, and eventually dumped in the front garden of the 

 cottage. My first act was to separate a strong crown and 

 send it with my compliments to the landowner, from whom 

 however I received no word of thanks. A large hamper 

 was obtained, into which the mass was dumped, and so 

 eventually found its way to London. On dissecting it, it 

 proved to have no less than thirty-three strong crowns, all 

 true to type, and in due course these found their way to 

 many collections. Curiously enough, not content with 

 this, the central core, whence these crowns were removed, 

 was thrown into a close frame with some Todeas, and in a 

 short time hundreds of tiny plants of the variety appeared 

 thereon from bulbils on the old caudices, by which a valuable 

 lesson was learned as regards easy propagation of this 

 species generally. Nineteen years elapsed before I had 

 an opportunity of revisiting the spot, when, being at 

 Okehampton, I determined to do so to see if by chance any 

 of the variety had re-established itself from spores. I 

 found Sticklepath quite unaltered, bar the smithy, which 

 did not appear to be at work. I found the lane, passed 

 through the gate, but then I found what changes a running 

 stream can efiect in time. The whole of the slope I have 

 described was gone, the path I traversed was now on the 

 very edge of a precipitous bank, the spot where the " find " 

 was found was right away on the other side of the stream, 

 and even some distance from it, and it was clear that had 

 it not been found by me, its lease in situ would have been 

 a short one, since already, when found, its roots were at the 

 water's edge, so that it must ere long have been under- 

 mined and washed away by the flood. Surely, then, the 

 Sabbath discovery was after all one of salvation instead of 

 perdition. Anyway, I have forgiven myself. 



Chas. T. Druery, V.M.H., F.L.S. 



