96 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



ago it was plentiful. Another rare plant which has 

 suffered from the same cause is the fragrant Daphne 

 mezereion. This beautiful shrub, which flowers in 

 early spring, often in the month of February, before 

 the leaves appear, used not to be uncommon in the 

 Hampshire woods, especially about Andover and in 

 the neighbourhood of Selborne. In Gilbert White's 

 time it grew on the hanger, " among the shrubs at the 

 S.E. end, above the cottages." In a former parish of 

 the writer's it used often to be found when the under- 

 wood was cut. One old woodman remembered having 

 seen as many as thirty or forty plants in a single 

 copse. Though still frequent in cottage gardens, the 

 shrub is now almost extinct in our woods, owing in a 

 great measure, to quote a Hampshire writer of fifty 

 years ago, to " the avidity with which it has been 

 hunted out and dug up for transplanting by the cot- 

 tagers, either for their own use or for sale to the 

 nurserymen." So, too, with the beautiful Dianthus 

 cczsms, or Cheddar pink, which formerly covered the 

 romantic limestone cliffs from which it takes its name. 

 It is now nearly destroyed in this, its only native 

 habitat in Great Britain, through the mercenary habit 

 of digging up the plants for sale to visitors. 



And what has happened to many species of our 

 rarer and more beautiful flowering plants has taken 

 place in a still more lamentable degree in the case of 

 our native ferns. All over the country — in Yorkshire, 

 in Wales, in Devonshire, in the home counties — they 

 have been ruthlessly destroyed for purposes of gain. 

 Many of our choicest species are on the verge of 

 extinction from this single cause. Our very hedge- 

 rows are being denuded of the commoner but not less 

 beautiful kinds by lazy tramps, who hawk them 



