354 Rock Samphire, &c., oh the West of Scotland. [Sess. 



to Watson by Boswell Syine, editor of Sowerby's Botany, 3rd 

 edition ; and as regards Ayrshire, that Crithmum is included 

 by the late Eev. James Duncan (died 1861), whose catalogue 

 of Ayrshire plants was treated by Watson as reliable, no Ayr- 

 shire station, however, being given. 



That our plant should have made its way so far north as 

 to Colonsay, where on the western side of the island it was 

 last year met with growing in a compact mass, two square 

 yards in extent, just at high-water mark, and among very 

 savage large broken rocks, was interesting, as it extends the 

 plant's geographical range a good way farther up the British 

 coast, indicating that there is room for the discovery of 

 other plants with which the higher latitude would not 

 disagree. 



There is but one species of the genus Crithmum known 

 to science — this of ours, — and its distribution, according to 

 Bentham, is the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Northern 

 Africa, extending along the Mediterranean to the Black 

 Sea. It is abundant in Southern and Western England, 

 and, as F. H. Davey in his new tentative ' Flora of Corn- 

 wall ' states, it occurs all round the Cornish coast. It is to 

 be found, also, in Ireland, principally in the south ; and the 

 author of this paper, in the company of several members of 

 this Society, met with it in 1901 on the shores of the Ken- 

 more river, on the coast of County Kerry. 



To other two British plants the name of Samphire has been 

 given — viz., to the Glasswort (Salicornia herbacea), called the 

 Marsh Samphire, a succulent shore -loving plant known to 

 most of us ; and secondly, to the Golden Samphire (Inula 

 crithmoides), a rather striking Composite, occurring along 

 the English Channel and in the Channel Islands, and 

 somewhat remarkably recorded also as having been met with 

 in years past in the South of Scotland, in Wigtown and 

 Kirkcudbright. 



The plant of to-night, the Eock Samphire, is distinguished, 

 as I need not say to this audience, by having been named in 

 Shakespeare's play, " King Lear " (Act IV. sc. vi.), and, up till 

 not many years ago, used to be gathered on the Dover cliffs 

 on what was known as Shakespeare's Day. 



