202 NOTES ON WILD PLANTS. 

are no longer to be found in this parish; they 
were mostly plants which grew in damp ground 
and were extirpated by drainage ; partly also, corn 
field ‘‘ weeds,” destroyed by improved farming. 
There is a field, on what is now the home farm, 
which was formerly (in my younger days) a rough 
and rather swampy pasture, (it was called the ox 
pasture), and which used to be in the spring, 
perfectly purple with the beautiful flowers of the 
early purple orchis (orchis mascula); and with this 
there grew also the true oxlip (primula elatior), and 
some marsh grasses, (carex panicea, carex binervis, 
blysmus compressus, triodia decumbens). All these 
have disappeared of course since the field was 
drained and ploughed up. The orchis, indeed 
still exists in the park and inthe shrub wood. The 
bee orchis (ophrys apifera) used to grow in the 
pasture adjacent to what is called Ne¢ton Hall; 
but my father ploughed up the ground and destroyed 
the orchis. It may possibly still exist on some of 
the grassy, sunny banks on the side towards 
Fornham (I gathered it in that dirGtion in 1832) ; 
but I do not know of a certain locality for it in the 
parish. 
Another beautiful orchis (morio) is still abundant 
in the lower part of the park; and there it may be 
seen every spring, with blossoms varying through 
every shade of colour from the deepest purple to 
flesh and cream colour, but always showing the 
ereen lines on the helmet of the flower quite un- 
