1 905-1906.] Formation and Flora of a Shingle Island. 297 



Fruits. — A good many rowan - berries ; rose- hips/ young 

 alder fruits, an unripe hazel nut, a broken Spanish chestnut 

 burr, dead cones of Scotch fir and larch, a few seed-vessels of 

 an umbellifer (? Heracleum Sphondylium), a head of Dactylis 

 glomerata, a seed of some composite, a piece of corn-spurrey in 

 seed, seeds of a rush, and some small brown seeds which we 

 could not name. The rush and corn-spurrey, however, were 

 most likely derived from plants growing close by on the island 

 itself. Probably many seeds brought down by the floods were 

 so small as to escape our notice ; and the only satisfactory 

 way of investigating these would be to collect portions of drift 

 and try to grow the seeds they contain. 



Roots. — Several healthy-looking roots of the lesser celandine, 

 which appeared likely to grow. Several fern roots, including 

 one with minute fronds (? Lomaria Spicant). One or two 

 entire plants of Eumex crispus, which, however, looked as if 

 they had been pulled up by hand and thrown into the river. 

 These dock plants, and a few potato tubers, some of which 

 were decaying, did not seem at all likely to live. Numerous 

 fragments, large and small, of moss ; sometimes regular mats 

 several inches square. These included two of the true mosses 

 (? Grimmia fascicularis and Polytrichum urnigerum), and at 

 least three species which I think belonged to the Jungermanni- 

 aceae ; there was also one rather large piece of Fontinalis sp., 

 and a scrap of sphagnum. All of these except the last two 

 seemed likely to live. 



Lastly, great lumps of turf, sometimes more than a foot 

 square, torn presumably from the river - bank or from the 

 banks of Eilean a Phortaire. They consisted chiefly of 

 grasses, with one or two roots of heather (Calluna) and clover ; 

 and were good solid pieces of turf with two or three inches of 

 sandy earth containing live worms and other creatures. All 

 these various kinds of drift were sorted out by the river; the 

 twigs were deposited along the sloping western edges of the 

 high shingle bank, and on the low western part of the island, 

 and were often half buried in sand. The leaves were mostly 

 collected into layers some inches deep, which will help to form 

 good soil ; these also were on the western part. On the large 

 eastern shingle bank, and in fact wherever there was bare 

 shingle, practically nothing had been able to lodge, except 



1 Found in Sept. 1905. 



