GHoolhope Naturalists’ Field Club. 
FLORULA OF THE DOWARD HILLS, 
By Mr. B. M. Watxins—August 11th, 1881. 
“Westward, Great Doward, stretching wide 
Upheaves his iron-bowell’d side ; 
And by his everlasting mound, 
Prescribes th’ imprison’d river's bound, 
And strikes the eye with mountain force.” 
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‘* And where the mind repose would seek, 
A barren, storm-defying peak, 
The Little Doward lifted high 
His rocky crown of royalty.”—Bloomfield. 
THE following paper may with propriety be termed a “‘ Florula,” being intended 
to be a Flora on a minute scale, and to do for a very restricted area what the 
Local Flora is designed to accomplish on a larger scale. There is much to en- 
courage one to take up the study of the Natural History of a very restricted dis- 
trict. It is capable of being worked out with much greater completeness than that 
of a larger area; and a single individual, or a small group of workers, may com- 
plete what, on a county scale, would need the co-operation of many. 
The author of the present Florula has been working more or less at the phan- 
erogamic botany of the Doward Hills for the past thirty-five years; it is therefore 
hoped that the sketch of their productions may be—at least as far as their rarer 
species go—tolerably complete. He has had the idea of bringing his observations 
into the form of a paper for only a few years past, and this must be his 
apology for the fact which the following lists will make apparent, that there are 
not a few more common plants which ought to make their appearance there, which 
are as yet conspicuous only for their absence. May he express a hope that 
what he has attempted for the Phanerogamic botany of this small area will be 
carried out by some of the members of this Club for the various branches of their 
Cryptogamic vegetation—mosses and fungi—and again for their equally interesting 
and varied fauna and insect life, and that thus we may possess for at least one 
corner of the county what I may be allowed to say the Woolhope Club should 
never rest until we possess for every corner of the county, a tolerably complete 
and reliable Natural History ? 
I now proceed to mark the exact topographical limitations of this Florula, 
which, I need not tell Herefordshire Naturalists, comprises in its narrow limits a 
district unique in every sort of interest which draws together the members of a 
Naturalists’ Club. These limits are extremely simple. Beginning at the north- 
east, we touch it first in the centre of the village of Whitchurch, whence the turn- 
