142 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



it appears to have ceased in consequence of the 

 difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of roots. 



In those days several native plants found in the 

 salt-marshes were regularly gathered by the people 

 and used as vegetables. In his scarce book on The 

 Antiquities of Harwich, Samuel Dale tells us that 

 the sea-beet or sea-spinach, so abundant along the 

 coast, was commonly used " as a boiled sallet and in 

 broths and soups." This good and sensible custom 

 has not yet died out, and many a dish of wild spinach 

 is gathered every spring in the salt-marshes along the 

 coast. One of the commonest plants to be found on 

 the mud of the salterns is Salicornia or glasswort, and 

 this in the olden times was regularly gathered for pur- 

 poses of pickling. It served as a substitute for the 

 true samphire, which was not to be met with in the 

 Essex marshes. But, strange to say, within the last 

 few years a single patch of this species, Crithmum 

 maritimum, a plant immortalised by Shakespeare, and 

 still to be seen in luxuriant profusion in its historic 

 locality on the chalk-cliffs of Dover, has been dis- 

 covered in the salt-marshes not far from the Lander- 

 mere Lading. Never before had the plant been 

 recorded for the county, or, indeed, for the east coast 

 of England. But there, on one solitary spot in the 

 vast stretch of salterns, it was flourishing in lonely 

 splendour. How it came there must be left to others 

 to decide. 



