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friend of mine, a botanist, resident at Ely (it was in the year 
1833) told me ofa fen ditch not far out of the town, in which 
there were several fine plants of the Senecio paludosus. He 
kindly took me to the spot, and I was gratified at the sight of so 
rare a plant still growing there, never having been disturbed. I 
cut two fine specimens, leaving the root—one for my own 
herbarium, and the other for my friend Broome, in whose 
collection I presume it still exists. Very soon after this the rails 
from Cambridge to Ely, which had been in progress some time, 
cut through the ditch and there was an end of the plant for ever 
in that locality. My friend informed me afterwards that he 
knew of no other locality for it in Cambridgeshire. It may still 
exist in the Fens of Lincoln, but in Hooker’s Flora it is said to be 
“now almost extinct.” 
Another instance of the destruction of our native plants by 
ingress of the rail may be found in our own county of Somerset. 
Broome and I twice made a botanical excursion to Shapwick Moor 
and Glastonbury. The first was in July, 1855, when the moor was 
in its original state, on which occasion we found more than 
twenty species of plants not to be met with about Bath, many of 
them rare and local. We visited the moor again the year after, 
when a change in the place had already commenced and we 
missed some of the rarities found on the occasion of our first visit. 
A very few years after the moor was almost entirely cleared away 
for the introduction of the rail and a railway station. 
Another and the last case I would mention on this subject, 
in which the locality was destroyed—though fortunately a good 
number of specimens were secured first—is that of the Holostewm 
umbellatum ; a small delicate little plant found on old walls, and 
very rare in this country ; being confined to Norwich and one or 
two other old towns in the eastern counties. A few years back 
Mr. Trimmer, the author of the “ Flora of Norfolk,” kindly sent 
me a considerable number of fine specimens of this plant from an 
old wall in Norwich, which he was just in time to gather before 
