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habitat for it. If Turner or Gerard had ever found it, they 

 would have said so — they are always fond of giving localities ; 

 Gerard so much so, that he was convicted on one occasion of 

 planting a rare plant in one locality and then discovering it, 

 and publishing the locality. In Eay's time it had reached 

 Cambridgeshire, but the first notice that I can find of it south of 

 the Trent is in Blackstone's "Specimen Botanicum," 1746. He 

 names a few places round London, and among them Windsor 

 Lake. This looks as if the plant might have been introduced 

 from Scotland to please the Scottish King, James I., or he might 

 have introduced it himself, for he was fond of introducing rarities. 

 The whole of what is now Buckingham Palace and Gardens was 

 planted by him with mulberries to encourage the silk trade. 



But to my mind there is a still stronger proof that the 

 plant was unknown in England, because with the exception of 

 the Herbalists, the plant is entirely absent from English 

 literature, either under its name of Water Lily or its other name 

 of AVater Rose. When we consider what a grand plant the 

 Water Lily is, it seems impossible that it could have escaped the 

 notice of all our writers, who yet notice so many of our wild 

 plants. It is not named by Chaucer, Gower, or Spenser, nor by 

 Shakespeare (who surely must have named it in the death of 

 Ophelia had he ever seen it) ; nor by Drayton, who wrote a long 

 account of rivers ; nor by Vaughan, the Silurist, who had a 

 special eye for all things that grew in or by rivers ; nor by 

 Herbert, Marvell, or Herrick. Not trusting my own research 

 I applied to Dr. Murray, who is always most helpful, and he at 

 once sent me all the slips that they had been able to collect, 

 expressing at the same time his surprise at finding the plant 

 unnamed except by the Herbalists.* It is named once in a 



* There is a passage in "Walton's Angler which apparently proves 

 the contrary : — " You are to cleanse your pond, if you intend either 

 profit or pleasure, once every three or four years. ... to kill the 



