148 



ON THE MORE RARE PLANTS OF THE LONGMYNDS. 



BY GRIFFITH H. GRIFFITHS, ESQ., M.D., 

 Honorary Secretary of the Worcester Naturalists' Field Club. 



"We are all more or less struck with the great extent, variegated aspect, 

 the utility and beauty of the clothing of our globe. 



Yes, on " this green ball floating through the heavens," from the 

 gigantic Adansonia to the hyssop on the wall— from the proudest palm to the 

 microscopic moss — the distribution of vegetable life is scarcely arrested by height 

 or depth. 



Forests of beech wave on the Himalayas, fourteen thousand feet above 

 the summit of hoary-headed Mont Blanc. Deep in the unfathomed ocean, 

 Algte lave their olive-tinted fronds. Melville Island, with its long, dreary night 

 of winter, has its saxifrage and ranunculus, powdering like sunbeams those 

 thrillicg regions of thick-ribbed ice. The boiling waters in Iceland, the hot 

 springs of Arabia, have their appropriate Conferva.-, while the minute Proto- 

 ccccus lives in and enlivens with its glow the Polar snows. 



Last year my colleague, Mr. Lees, found in some hailstones which we 

 gathered in a pelting storm, mycoderms present in integro, awaiting, probably, 

 some more genial nidus for their due elaboration. 



Perched on the tufa of extinct craters, we are told, the Cypcrus polystachus 

 loves to dwell, which for aught else is bare and desolate (Humbolt's Cosmos). 



The subterranean cavern has its peculiar tribe, for here the Schistostega 

 pennata (which I have brought for exhibition) reflects in the minute filaments 

 of its protothallus the faintest light reaching the caves in which it likes to 

 grow. 



Earth, air, and water, the rudest relic and most sterile spot, nay, plants 

 themselves, have their respective epiphytes in varying ratios of development 

 and strict adaptation. 



The multiplicity of such objects renders it the more desirable to study 

 the laws affecting their distiibution, so as to perceive the regular and successive 

 operation of certain influences, and in the "Longmynd Flora" we have an 

 opportunity of singling out the equivalents of different types of plants and 

 vegetable structure, and so to gain an insight into the character and connexion 

 of natural phenomena. For this purpose it will be necessary to glance at 



1. Ths- physical peculiarities of the Longmynd Hills, 



2. Their vegetable physiognomy, and ■ 



3. The natural history of such vegetation. 



