DESCRIPTIVE. 347 
islands, the chief peculiarity being the occurrence of sandstone or 
gritstone, which replaces the more usual diorite in the north-eastern 
end, and presents on that coast a type of rock scenery not found 
elsewhere in the Channel group. A remarkable natural curiosity is 
a magnificent block of this stone, forty feet high, which juts out from 
the cliff and leans seawards—whence its name, La Roche Pendante, 
or the Hanging Rock. 
The soil in some parts of the island is deep and of excellent 
quality, but in others it is poor, and produces but thin crops. 
Except in the valleys that open out towards the north, there are few 
trees, and they do not attain any large size. Springs of excellent 
water abound, but streamlets are few in number and very small. 
The air is very much drier and more bracing than in Guernsey, as 
well as colder, so that even in summer the evenings are often 
chilly ; but the winters are mild, and the rainfall is below the 
average for these islands. 
In an old book, which has now become somewhat scarce— 
Jacob’s Annals of the British Norman Isles, published in 1830—it is 
asserted that ‘the botanist will be disappointed if his sole object in 
visiting Alderney is to collect rare plants’—a statement which loses 
some of its force, however, when the writer candidly confesses, a few 
lines further on, that he does not possess ‘the microscopic eye of 
those who make botany their peculiar study.’ A more intimate 
acquaintance with the subject would have convinced the old author 
that not only does Alderney possess an exceedingly interesting flora, 
but also that a visitor will find here in a single day’s botanising a 
larger variety of really rare plants than in either of the other Channel 
Islands. There are certainly not many places in England where, 
within an area of four square miles, a dozen plants may be found 
equal in rarity to the following :— 
Sinapis incana. Herniaria glabra. 
Helianthemum guttatum. Bupleurum aristatum. 
Polycarpon tetraphyllum. Centaurea aspera. 
Hypericum linarifolium. Orobanche Millefolii. 
Ononis reclinata. Romulea Columnae. 
Arthrolobium ebracteatum. Bromus maximus. 
Little, if anything, was known about the wild plants of this out- 
of-the-way spot until the publication in 1839 of the first A/ora of the 
Channel Islands—Professor C. Cardale Babington’s little book, 
entitled Primitiae Florae Sarnicae. Babington spent a week in 
Alderney in 1838, from the 12th to the roth of July, and notes in 
his Journal that he then gathered 330 plants, ‘exclusive of several 
as yet undetermined.’ This estimate, however, proved to be a little 
too large, for the number of Flowering Plants and Ferns he records 
for the island is 313 species, as stated in the Preface of his 
book. 
