92 FLORA IIISTORTCA. 



this country, and those few so frequently deprived 

 of their singular productions, that many indigenous 

 plants are seldom met Avith, except under cultiva- 

 tion in the garden, we are induced to make frequent 

 extracts from the old writers who have particularized 

 the spots on which they formerly grew ; and of 

 these authors none have been so faithful as Gerard, 

 who is better entitled to the name of the English 

 Pliny than any author from his time to the present 

 day. This vegetable historian, speaking of the 

 Everlasting Pea, says, *• This plant doth grow in 

 shadowie woods, and among bushes ; there groweth 

 great store thereof in Swanescombe-woode, a mile 

 and a halfe from Green-hithe, in Kent, as you go to 

 a village thereby called Betsome, and in divers 

 other places." Mr. Ray observed it about the 

 middle of the last century, in the Cambridgeshire 

 woods ; and Martyn tells us that it has also been 

 found at Rocks, near Red Neese, by Whitehaven, 

 Severn Stoke Copse, Worcestershire, &c. It is also 

 found in various parts of the South of France. 



This plant is too large and rambling for the 

 flower border, but it forms a splendid ornament in 

 the shrubbery or wilderness walks, where, by co- 

 vering the bare trunks of trees with its clusters of 

 rose-coloured flowers, it adds greatly to the cheer- 

 fulness of these scenes from the middle of June to 

 the end of July. Where walls or other fences are 



