1854] BOTANICAL CORRESPONDENCE. 325 



To Professor J. H. Balfour, M.D. 



St. John's College, Cambridge, Nov. 28, 1854. 



Dear Balfour, — As you may like to have Mr. Carroll's remarks 

 in answer to a recent letter from me concerning the supposed 

 Hypericum anglicum, I append them to this note. — Yours truly, 

 Charles C. Babington. 



Extracts from a letter from Isaac Carroll, Esq., of Cork. 



In the first place he states that the Hypericum in question was 

 certainly not known as naturalized to Dr. Power at the time of the 

 publication of the "Flora of Cork County" (1845), which I may 

 remark is a very complete Flora, in which "he was particularly 

 careful to omit nothing that could by any possibility be considered 

 a native or even naturalized, however imperfectly. Dr. Balfour is 

 right in considering H. anglicum [of Bab.] a perfectly naturalized 

 plant, but until I see it growing in less suspicious localities, I should 

 not like to pronounce it a native. A single plant grows on an old 

 wall in Shaw's place at Monkstown, but although there is no modern 

 garden from which it might have escaped, yet the wall is close to an 

 old castle and burying ground, localities always famous for doubtful 

 species. My own conviction (from present knowledge) is that 

 H. anglicum originally escaped from cultivation, and is in the same 

 predicament as H. calycinum, Vinca major and minor, Hesperis matron- 

 alis, Iris pseud-acorus, and Sambucus ehdus ; none of which I have 

 ever seen in this neighbourhood, but in what have been gardens, 

 shrubberies, by cottages, or old castles." To me this seems con- 

 clusive as to its claims to be considered as a native at Cork. — C.C.B. 



To the same. 



St. John's College, Cambridge, Dec. 8, 1854. 



Dear Balfour, — I return your specimens with thanks, but much 

 fear that they have suffered some slight injury on the journey. 

 They have interested me greatly, especially as I obtain from them 

 two Scottish and one Irish station for the plant that I believe to be 

 the H. anglicum of Bertolini. The calyx of this plant must surely 

 be sufficient to separate it from H. hircinum, to which it seems to be 

 the most nearly allied. I judge from your specimens that the 

 capsule is rather acute, differing more in shape from that of H. 

 Androsaemum than Bertolini appears to have supposed. Sowerby's 

 figure ("English Botany," 1225) represents a form just like that 

 presented hy your plants, and also shews that the styles are liable 

 to break off at a short distance from their base as has happened on 

 one or more of your capsules. I see no reason whatever to doubt 

 that that plate is intended to represent the H. anglicum, and that it 

 cannot be justly quoted to H. Androsaemum, as all authors previous 

 to Bertolini have quoted it, and as Smith's description would lead 



