42 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 4 
hardship and liable to contract disease. By the formation | 
of plantations round the civilized parts of the country, an - 
improved method of collecting the leaves might also be f 
adopted, the women and children could help in gathering, | 
and theruinous method of tearing off the branches, by which © 
the tree frequently perishes, might be avoided. T 
BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
New British Plants. 
We have received from Francis Whitla, Esq., of Belfast, | 
a very fine Equisetum, hitherto unnoticed as British, the E. | 
elongatum of Willdenow; a southern plant, indeed, but of. 
which, as is well known to be remarkably the case with some f 
other plants that had been supposed to be peculiar to warmer p 
skies, the range has extended to Ireland. Mr. Whitla found 
it in mountain glens near Belfast.  Schlechtendal, who 
had given an excellent figure of it, in his * Adumbratio 
Filicum in Promontorio Bone Spei provenientium," from 
Cape of Good Hope specimens, thus characterizes it: : 
* E. elongatum ; frondibus subduplicato-ramosis, ramis sub- : 
ternis scabriusculis sex-sulcatis spiciferis, vaginis cupuliformi- ` 
bus 6—12-dentatis, dentibus acuminato-aristatis, Spiels | 
mucronatis.” 
The localities Schlechtendal gives for it are, moist, sandy 
places, often on the sea-shore and the banks of rivers in the ` 
south of Europe; for example, Vienna (Beyrich), Venice 
(Willdenow), Trieste (Hoppe), at the Lake of Garda (Bey- 
rich), Bordigal (Bory); in the Canary Isles (Von Buch); | 
at the fountains of Mount Sinai (Ehrenberg and Hemprich); - 
Northern Africa, at the base of Mount Zowan, Tunis (Des- 4 
fontaines) ; Southern Africa at Chamka and Olifantsriver, | 
Cape of Good Hope; and lastly, on the banks of the Great 
Lake in the Island of Bourbon. Our specimens are 2} and 
3feetlong. If the roughness of the stem, its great leng 
