68 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



is also related by Buchanan that when the Danes 

 under Sweno invaded Scotland and gained a victory 

 near Perth, the Scots, having arranged a truce, agreed 

 to supply the hostile army with food. This they pro- 

 ceeded to do, having first mingled with the bread the 

 juice of the deadly dwale, which stupefied the in- 

 vaders, who were then slain by their treacherous 

 oes. 



The deadly nightshade seems to have been formerly 

 a far commoner plant than it is now. Gerarde speaks oi 

 it as growing plentifully in the Isle of Ely, in Lincoln- 

 shire, and in other localities ; and John Ray mentions 

 many places where in his day it was to be found, as 

 " in the lanes about Fulbourn in Cambridgeshire 

 plentifully," at Cuckstone, near Rochester in Kent, 

 " where all the Yards and Backsides are over-run with 

 it." Less than a hundred years ago, it is noted by 

 Thomas Garnier, afterwards Dean oi Winchester, a 

 famous Hampshire botanist and horticulturist, that the 

 plant "abounded on the roadsides at Otterbourne," a 

 village some four miles from the cathedral city, and 

 since associated with the names oi Keble and of 

 Charlotte Yonge, and he adds, " I mean to procure its 

 being rooted up from thence, as a very dangerous 

 situation for it." The plant has now disappeared from 

 the wayside at Otterbourne, perhaps owing to Mr. 

 Garnier's intervention, and indeed it has become a 

 great rarity in Hampshire, being only found in one or 

 two localities. In the Isle of Wight it is entirely ex- 

 tinct, but on the mainland it may still be seen in an 

 old disused chalk-pit, not far from Selborne, where it 

 doubtless flourished in the da3's of Gilbert White, and 

 in another locality known to the writer, where it grows 

 in such extraordinary abundance as to call for special 



