224, ENGLISH BOTANY. 
again mixed up and formed into cakes. Before being used by the dyer, these cakes have 
to be again broken up, moistened, and subjected to further fermentation : much of the 
quality of the dye is said to depend on the way in which this operation is performed. 
The colour is brought out by mixing an infusion of the Woad thus prepared with lime- 
water. The best Woad is worth £20 or more a ton, although its price has declined 
since the extensive introduction of indigo, to which it is inferior in richness of colour, 
but is more permanent. Some time ago the Woad was recommended as a fodder plant, 
and has been so employed in France and Belgium ; but our farmers do not consider it a 
remunerative investment in comparison with our own root and leaf crops. The interest 
of this plant is considerable, when we consider the antiquity of its use, and its connection 
with the earliest attempts at personal decoration by our forefathers, to whom it supplied, 
according to historians and poets, all the requirements of a fashionable toilette. 
EXCLUDED SPECIES. 
VELLA ANNUA. Linn. (BB. 1442) 
Said to have been found on Salisbury Plain. Probably a 
mistake, as the Rev. W. W. Newbould informs me that the plant 
which represents it in the Sloane Herbarium is Reseda lutea. 
MALCOMIA MARITIMA. R. Brown. 
Has been found near Dover. No doubt an escape from culti- 
vation. It does not now grow in the station recorded for it. 
CARDAMINE BELLIDIFOLIA. Zinn. (E. B. 2355.) 
The only authority for this plant is Withering, in whose Her- 
barium two examples of it are preserved, said to be from Scotland. 
The other stations recorded for it have been by mistaking Arabis 
stricta or hirsuta, and Cochlearia alpina for Cardamine bellidifolia, 
as shown by the Sloane Herbarium, etc. — 
ALYSSUM INCANUM. Zinn. 
Has been recorded from near Lewes and Weymouth, but is not 
permanently established in Britain. 
LEPIDIUM HIRTUM. Zinn. 
Smith confounded this plant with L. Smithii, but he sent 
two pods of the true plant to be drawn for “English Botany.” 
A plant in the Sloane Herbarium from the Welsh mountains may 
be L. hirtum, but has the pods broader and more oval. 
