82 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



appearing in spots where it had been unknown before. 

 Kingsley tells us that for fourteen years he had hunted 

 for it in vain at Eversley, while in the fifteenth it 

 appeared by dozens upon a new-made bank, which 

 had been for at least two hundred years a farmyard 

 gateway. Yet another plant of the same genus which 

 is occasionally met with among the corn is the beautiful 

 field larkspur. Ray mentions it as having been " found 

 in great plenty by Mr. F. Sherard amongst the corn in 

 Swafham Field in Cambridge-shire" ; and in the same 

 district it is still in some seasons not uncommon. 

 It is an exceedingly pretty plant with its terminal 

 racemes of blue or pink or white flowers. Ray has 

 also chronicled several uncommon plants as growing 

 in the cornfields near his home at Black Notley in 

 Essex. Among these may be specially mentioned the 

 common thorow-wax, or " thorow-leafe," a name given 

 to the plant now known as Bupleumm rotundifolium, L., 

 by Dr. Wm. Turner in the sixteenth century, because, 

 as he says, " the stalke waxeth throw the leaves " ; 

 and the " small narrow-leaved cudweed, very much 

 branched, and full of seed" {jFilago gallica, L.), one of 

 the rarest of British plants, which it is satisfactory to 

 notice still finds a home in the Essex cornfields. One 

 more plant which frequents similar situations calls 

 for notice. This is the corn bell-flower {Specularia 

 hybrida, D.), known among the older botanists as 

 Venus's looking-glasse or codded corn violet. It is a 

 distinguished-looking little annual, some eight or ten 

 inches in height, with dark-blue flowers. The writer 

 has seen it in the sandy fields between Sandown and 

 Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, but it is more frequently 

 met with in the Eastern Counties. It is not uncommon 

 in parts of Essex, and a few years ago it could always 



