70 
genous. TZ: fungens appeared in two or three patches on the 
ballast near Maryport last summer, but fresh ballast having been 
lately spread over the place, it is probably obliterated. Lolium 
ttalicum, var. ramosumt ; of this luxuriant development of the Rye- 
Grass, several specimens have been gathered at Risehow and 
Maryport ; from the surroundings in both instances, I conclude 
that powerful stimulants of a manurial kind tend to produce this 
striking deviation from the type; at Risehow it grew where the 
sewage from neighbouring dwellings flows out upon the open beach, 
and at Maryport the fibrous roots were in immediate contact with 
night soil scattered among household refuse. /ymus arenarius 
is rapidly becoming established on the North Shore at Workington, 
between the Lonsdale Dock and high-water mark. Hordeum 
murinum once grew on the Maryport bent-hills, and along the 
beach in the direction of Flimby and St. Helen’s; the bent-hills 
are now covered with unsightly slag mounds from the iron furnaces, 
whilst at Flimby the encroachment of the sea in late years has led 
to its destruction—a stray plant may now and then be discovered, 
but practically it may be looked upon as annihilated. 
FILICES. 
The neighbourhood of the coast seems hardly so congenial to 
Fern life as the gills of the Lake District; yet even here fern- 
hunters are gradually extirpating many species that were once quite 
common. Even during the extreme drought of the past summer, 
at both Carlisle and Flimby I observed whole baskets being carried 
off at a period when the successful transplantation of the ferns was 
impossible. Only a few weeks ago, within seven miles of Carlisle, 
I was grieved to find one locality, where I gathered my earliest 
beech fern, stripped to the very last frond. Will anyone, there- 
fore, and especially any member of an Association like our own, 
consider it out of place to withhold information as to the locality 
in which a lover of plant life may have discovered anything rare, 
whether among ferns or flowering plants? I will, therefore, in 
treating of seaside ferns, refrain from noting any new station, but 
be content with mentioning such as long have been public property, 
