HENKY BOSWELL. 135 



would be caused by the difference of situation and liabitat, save only in 

 the bordering of the leaf, which seems really tangibly different. 



Is there any other difference? This alone seems little to found a 

 specific distinction upon. Of course I do not profess, on so slight ex- 

 amination and so poor specimens, to question your decision ; only I do 

 not see the proofs of it myself my with own eyes. 



It is now some five j^ears since I was at Stokenchurch, and I am not 

 familiar with the details of the locality; but there is a line of chalk hills 

 running round the borders of Oxfordshire and Bucks upon which Stoken- 

 cluu-ch is placed. The slopes of these hills are here and there covered 

 with wood, chiefly of beech, in which I have found Neottia Nidus-avis, 

 Monotropa Hypopitys, Hordeum sylvaiicam, Epipactis latifolia and 

 yrandiflora, Polytrichum formosum, and barren Neckcra crispa. This 

 Fissidens probably grew in some shaded spot where the earth was bare, 

 as the side of a pit or some such place. 



I do not think there is anything in the way of rocks anywhere there, 

 save I'ocks of chalk ; and the only stones are tlints. But perhaps a short 

 distance from the line I traversed would bring one upon gravel, or even 

 upon the oolitic limestone. I will try to get more exact information by- 

 and-by, and perhaps when the new railway opens to Thame I may go 

 there for a day. Is it possible to get more exact information on the spot ? 



I have this summer found that my fertile plants of "i?. 2}seiulo- 

 triqiictriim''' from Bullingdon have all synoicous flowers! and it seems 

 that B. hlmimi (fruiting) and B. p seitdo-triquetrum (with female flowers 

 and also I believe with male) grow there, and having found non-fruiting 

 plants dioicous I had confounded them all together. I have been trying 

 to find some other tangible difference besides the inflorescence, but fail to 

 do so. They seem to me undistinguishable without dissection, more so 

 than B. torquescens and capillare. 



I am very sorry to hear that Wybunbury too is going to be cultivated. 

 What will the next generation of botanists do ? There will be nothing 

 but cornfield weeds for them to study. Every summer makes a dilference 

 hereabouts, and many spots where I gathered flowers and mosses within 

 these four or five years are now destroyed. 



Yours very truly, 



H. BoSWELL. 



One of the reasons which led him to give up field-work was the 

 encroachment which drainage, cultivation, and building operations 

 made upon his favourite localities, to which he alludes in this 

 letter. I scarcely ever talked with him without his referring to the 

 former glories of Shotover or Bullingdon. This regret he thus 

 expresses in the Flora of O.rJ'ordsliire: — "During the last thirty or 

 forty years the increase of drainage and cultivation has continued 

 at an accelerated pace, and many places once yielding good 

 botanical prospects have been destroyed. Shotover, the famous 

 haunt of Oxford naturalists, has sufl'ered great deterioraticto, 

 though a little yet remains ; Bullingdon Green, once free and open, 

 has been ploughed and enclosed ; the adjacent bog, so rich in 

 Howers and mosses a quarter of a century ago, is drained, ami 

 yields not much now but a wretched crop of bad corn and worse 

 potatoes. Of Wychwood Forest little is left, and that little con- 

 stantly diminishing, many acres of pleasant woodland having been 

 turned into a desert of naked fields intersected by equally naked 

 and very ugly stone walls, and everywhere similar processes have 



