NOTES ON WILD PLANTS. 207 
eradicated by the destruction or alteration of the 
hedges in which they grew. 
It is, however, remarkable that a fern was 
brought to me a few years ago, which I should 
little have expected to meet with in Suffolk: 
it was the brittle fern, cystopteris fragilis; a plant 
not uncommon in Wales and Scotland, and the 
mountainous districts of England, but very 
seldom to be seen in the plains. It was growing 
on the inside of an old well; and I think it most 
probable that the minute seeds of the plant, 
floating in the air, had been wafted thither from 
some garden, and had germinated where they 
found the moisture and the deep shade suitable to 
them. 
The 385 species of plants which I know to 
srow or to have grown wild in the parish of 
areon, belong’ to 60 “families” or © natural 
orders. 
(‘‘This estimate includes several naturalized 
plants as already mentioned). The _ grasses 
amount to 40 species or distinct kinds.”’) 
By species, | mean sorts or forms of which the 
differences are distinctly perceptible, and appear 
to be constant under ordinary circumstances and 
Within ordinary experience. The sedges (or 
cyperaceae, amount to only 12, including some 
which have been destroyed by drainage; the 
rushes (junceae), to 6, or perhaps 7; the lilies 
(taken in the widest sense), to 5, 3 of which are 
naturalised; the orchids to 10; the ranunculus 
