143 



to Widemarsh which I know to be the habitat of the Hyoscyamus is the lane at 

 the foot of Backbury hill, which is about five-and-a-haif miles from the scene of 

 its sudden re-appearance last autmnn. 



In the course of my search upon the embankments, I obtained several other 

 plants new to the locality. Of Chrysanthemum segetum, I gathered two specimens 

 on the railway between the Above-Eign bridge and Widemarsh. The nearest 

 habitats for it, as far as I am aware, are Sugwas Camp, 3 miles, and Clehonger, 

 4 miles distant. 



In two places, viz., on the railway embankment near the locality of the last- 

 mentioned plant, and at Widemarsh, I found very fine bushes of Marrubium 

 vulgare, which I had not previously seen anywhere within five or six miles of the 

 spot. 



Lamium incisum is more common, but I had not previously seen it at Wide- 

 marsh, although I found it on the Breinton road, on the opposite side of Hereford. 



Parthenium fehnfitga, which is now growing freely on the slopes of the 

 raised road over the Ross line, at Athelstan Hill, is another, and the last of these 

 new-comers which I detected. Although common enough in some parts of the 

 district, this is the first time I have seen it within some miles of its present habitat. 



The cause to which I attribute this sudden appearance of plants fresh to the 

 locality wiU be at once seen from the connection in which I have named them. 

 The spoil-heaps and embankments consist wholly of earth dug out of the cuttings ; 

 and it appears to me that the seeds had been buried, for ages perhaps, below the 

 reach of germinative influences. During their long entombment, by the mys- 

 terious power which vegetation possesses of suspending the vitality of the germ 

 untU circumstances are favourable for the development, the seeds had laid 

 dormant. The instances of the germination of the mummy wheat, after an 

 entombment of two or three thousand years, show to what long periods this state 

 of dormancy may extend. Perhaps the plants, whose appearance amid the light 

 of " upper earth " I thus record, may be the product of seeds entombed when 

 our British forefathers fought an ever-honourable, if a losing, game against 

 Ostorius and Agricola. It may be that the passing foot or the trailing spear of 

 some painted Silurian, while hastening to the Camp on Dinedor or Backbury, 

 struck against the parent plant, skaking off the seeds, which winds or waters 

 speedily swept into some gully, where drifting sUt, and the slower accumulations 

 of successive ages covered it up, until the needs of the great civiliser Steam at 

 length disentombed it from the prison of ages ; another proof that, in this well- 

 ordered frame, the work of the great Architectonicus — to borrow the term of the 

 17th century — nothing is lost. 



I make no apology to my brother students of nature for recording at length 

 what may be deemed so small a fact. It is by the accretion of small facts that 

 soundest generalisations become possible. To those who do not share our love 

 for the study of this wondrous world of nature which lies around us, I would 

 quote this as another instance that even science has its poetical side. If my 



