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By Thomas Bruges Flower, Esq. 143 
North Division. 
4, North-west District. “Chippenham, Dr. R. C. Alexander. In 
the wood on the right hand side of the Kingsdown road beyond 
Bathford, Colerne Park, Collett’s Bottom, Spye Park, Bowood, and 
near Ford. 
5. North-east District. ‘In the neighbourhood of Great Bed- 
wyn,”’ Ur. William Bartiett ; also Marlborough Forest. 
Extended research will probably prove the aquilegia to be not 
unfrequent in this latter district, and in other parts of the county 
not as yet sufficiently explored by the collecting botanist. Double 
varieties of our common columbine with white, pink, or dark crim- 
son flowers are often to be seen in gardens. The singularly close 
resemblance in the flowers of this plant to a group of birds, has 
given rise to the English name of Columbines, from Columba, a dove, 
and the Latin generic one of Aquilegia may with as much proba- 
bility have been intended to designate a gathering together of 
eagles, from the same bird-like conformation and grouping. There 
is, however, reason to suppose that the term aquilegia may be sim- 
ply the old Latin word aquilegium, slightly altered in termination, 
and which signifies a gathering or collecting of water (dew or rain), 
from agua and /ego, a purpose for which the hollow or tubular pro- 
cesses, or spurs, (nectaries) of the petals seem well fitted, and in fact 
they are seldom found without a self-secreted honied fluid which, in 
earlier times, may have been mistaken for such aqueous deposit. 
Rejecting these etymologies, it will be difficult to account for the 
length of the derivative from so simple a root, assuming the 
allusion to be merely to the resemblance as, has been asserted by 
no means obvious, of the blunt nectaries to the sharp claws of a 
bird of prey. The word aquilegia as altered and applied to our: 
plant is not of classical antiquity, though the species must have: 
been well known to the Ancients by some other name, as it is a 
native of most parts of Europe. 
“Delphinium Consolida (Linn) and Aconitum Napellus (Linn.) 
have been observed occasionally in the county, the former in a. 
cornfield at Bromham, by Miss L. Meredith, where it has been 
probably introduced with foreign seed; it can only be considered. 
