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greater weight. Professor Skeat, in his notes on Chaucer, refers 

 to this theory of the Clote being the Water Lily, but soon dis- 

 misses it as of no value. He refers, however^ to Gerard, and on 

 my writing to him on the subject, he wrote as follows : — 



" It is uot I who refer to Gerard. I only say that Halliwell refers 

 to Gerard ; and he gives the reference which I copy. I did not look it 

 up, because I did not believe in it. As to Claverton, it is simply a 

 FACT that either that place, or some other place of like name, is spelt 

 Clatfordtiin in a charter published by Kemble in his 'Codex 

 Diplomaticus.' There is also an A.S. Clatford as a place-name, and 

 still two parishes named Clatford. But it cannot well mean Clote- 

 ford, for the reason that if the A.S. word was Cldt, it would now be 

 Clote ; but it is not ; therefore the A.S. word was Clat (with .short a), 

 and it did not mean Clote, but something else. Had it meant ' Clote,' 

 your place would have been Cloverton with long o." 



Here I might well stop, but my inquiry into this one name has 

 led me into so many pleasant paths that I should like to conclude 

 the argument from my own researches. I now feel certain that 

 Clat or Clote, in Claverton, never had any connection with the 

 Water Lily for this reason, that the Water Lily did not grow 

 there when the name was given. I feel certain that there were 

 no wild Water Lilies, and very few, if any, cultivated ones in the 

 South of England for many centuries after that date. There is a 

 botanical reason for this. The plant is a northern one, and 

 perhaps indigenous in Scotland, but it is of such a rapid growth, 

 that if it had been long introduced, the still waters of our 

 southern rivers would have been filled with it by this time. I 

 can recollect the large pond at Warmley when I could pull or sail 

 on it anywhere. A Water Lily has since then been introduced, 

 and now the pond is completely choked with them. And that it 

 was not known as a wild plant is proved by the early writers. 

 The writers of the early Vocabularies found Nymphaea in Pliny, 

 and so tried to translate it, but could make nothing of it ; and 

 the early Herbalists of the 16th and 17th centuries all name it, but 

 they all copy one from another, and none of them name any wild 

 L 



