EARER PLANTS OF CENTRAL SOMERSETSHIRE. 357 



forms, with the nervation of the leaves. In the written records of 

 vegetable fragments, even of whole and well-preserved leaves, the 

 descriptions, though exact they may be, are always subjected to 

 erroneous representations of the mind. For the same reason, I con- 

 sider [it] not only as a right, but as a duty, to modify names and 

 descriptions of fossil species which I may have published formerly, 

 whenever the change is demanded either by the discovery of more 

 perfect specimens, which may show under another light the relations 

 of a plant, or by the recognition of different characters which were 

 not observed in a preliminary examination." 



With regard to the determination of Natural Orders based on 

 foliage alone, it is instructive to compare my Liospyros Barteri with 

 Chailletia' riijipilis, Turcz., both recent species from Western 

 Tropical Africa, which, except by the flower or fruit, are in the 

 herbarium difficult to distinguish. In the same manner, in the " Flora 

 of British India," i., p. 671 (1875), I pointed out the similarity of the 

 venation in the leaflets of the Sapindaceous genus Uemigyrosa to that 

 in the leaves of Diospyros Embryopteris^ Pers. 



Description of Plate 172. 



Principal figure. — A portion of a fruiting branch of Biospijros d'wersifoUa, 

 Hiern, with a portion of a lower shoot which has narrow leaves, and with a 

 transverse section of a fruit. 



Figure a, in the right-hand lower corner. A male flower of the allied 

 species, D. melanida, Poir. 



OlS" THE RAEER PLATTTS OF CEI^TRAL SOMERSETSHIRE, 

 AND ON THE DISCOVERY THERE OF ALTHJEA 

 HIRSVTA. 



Br J. G. Baker, F.L. S. 



As there is very little on record on the Botany of Central Somerset- 

 shire, I took the opportunity, whilst staying this year for a fortnight 

 at the end of August and beginning of September at Somerton, the 

 old capital of the county, of making a list of all the plants I noticed. 

 The catalogue contains about 400 species and varieties, of which the 

 following are what seem worth placing on record here. With the 

 exception of one or two species from Wells and Glastonbury, all the 

 stations are within five miles of Somerton. The two streams that 

 drain the district are the Parret and the Cary, both of which wind 

 sluggishly through low, turfy, alluvial flats, and, after joining, enter 

 the Bristol Channel below Bridge water. Above these low level flats, 

 intersected by abundant weed-choked ditches which communicate 

 with the streams, rise limestone ridges and sweeps of comparatively 

 level arable and pasture land. The universal rock is Secondary lime- 

 stone, as we strike here the band of Lias and Oolite that runs down 

 diagonally across England, down the very centre from Whitby, by way 

 of Northampton and Bath, to Portland and Lyme Regis ; and this 

 limestone gives its leading tone to the Somerton flora, the solid rock 



