THE ESSEX FIELD CI.U15. 207 



Clere family (Jemp. Edward I.) figured in Chancellor's " Ancient Sepulchral 

 Monuments of Essex," plates 33 and 34. Several members climbed up to the 

 top of the tower to view the fine landscape, extending over a great part of 

 Essex. 



On the pleasant greensward in front of the picturesque old church (both in 

 the very centre of the camp) the party then gathered together, augmented 

 by a scattered fringe of curious visitors, to be photographed by Mr. Spalding, 

 and to hear Dr. Taylor deliver one of his delightful scientific " lay sermons." 

 Considerable regret was felt that time did not allow of a more extended treat- 

 ment of his subject, which was : — 



" The Origin of our Native Plants." 



For the purpose of illustration, the specimens gathered during the ramble 

 were laid upon the table in front of the lecturer. Many of them were quite 

 " common objects of the country," Horsetails (^Equisetuni)^ Bracken-fern, Bryonia^ 

 Black Bryon}' (^Tamus), Spurges, Ranitnculi, Po/yga/in, &c., &c., but they served as 

 texts for the discourse. Where, asked Dr. Taylor, did our common wild flowers 

 come from ? It is very certain they did not originate in the British Islands. We 

 have not a single flowering plant which is peculiar to this country. The only 

 original flora of England exists in the fossil state. Our oldest flowering plants 

 are found in the pipeclays of Bournemouth, and they are allied to, if not iden- 

 tical with, the flora which now characterises Australia and New Zealand. But 

 there were some common flowerless plants, such as the horse-tails and brackens, 

 which had a high geological antiquity in this country. In the Upper Old Red 

 sandstones of Kilkenny, in Ireland, which were deposited in a large fresh water 

 lake before the commencement of the Carboniferous epoch, there were found 

 fossil ferns, club mosses (J^ycopodhini)^ and plants allied to the quillworts 

 Qlsoetei) ; and if we rambled around Windermere Lake at the present time we 

 should find in the woods the royal flowering fern, or Osmurida, which could hardly 

 be differentiated from the fossil ferns imbedded in the Kilkenny sandstones. 

 There also are found growing miniature groves of the wood hovselTiW (^Eqidsetum 

 syhaticufri), whilst in the shallow waters, where the green meadows border the 

 lake, would be found abundance of living quillworts (^hoetes)^ so that in this 

 respect our famous English lake as regards its flowerless vegetation resembled 

 that which existed in Ireland in Devonian times. Our bracken fern, so abun- 

 dant on all commons and heaths, and by our hedgerows, could hardly be distin- 

 guished from the abundant fossil fern (JiletJioptris) found in the Coal Measures, 

 and there was hardly anj' doubt it was its lineal descendant. Bracken ferns 

 identical in all but a trifling particular with our own, were as abundant in the 

 wild bush of Australia as on our English commons. Their wide geographical 

 distribution proved the enormous geological antiquity of these common plants. 

 The bracken was found not only in Australia, but in New Zealand, in all 

 the great Atlantic islands, near the Cape, in the northern parts of the 

 United States, and even near the equator. No fern in all the world was 

 so widely distributed. Dr. Taylor gave his reasons for believing that the 

 ancient terrestrial, flowerless flora of our planet was a modification of aquatic 

 plants ; and showed that the sperm cells of mosses, ferns and others were still pos- 

 sessed of aquatic locomotive organs which were very possibly lelicsof their ancient 

 aquatic mode of life. Turning to the floweringplants, and producing a specimen of 

 the White Bryony, he asked what it was doing here. We had only one species. It 

 belonged to an abundantly represented tropical order of plants — that of the 

 Gourds ; and it was as singular to find it in our hedgerows as it would be to 

 find a Chinese family settled in an English village. The same thing might be 

 said of the Black Bryon)^ which belonged to another tropical order — that of the 

 Yams. Our English Spurges were dwarfed representatives of gigantic tropical 

 relations, such as the indiarubber and gutta-percha trees. Even our common and 

 too-abundant nettles were herbaceous modifications of the family to which they 



