259 



ation takes place by throwing out the rarliatingr filaments which eventually again 

 produce the sporangia which sink as before mentioned. This little alga is well 

 figured in English Botany, tab. 137S, undername of Coiiferva echinuditti iiom 

 specimens sent in ISOi from a lake in Auglesea. Its proper systematic place is 

 in Koth's genus L'inihiria." At Colemere and Whitemere Mr. Leightou hIso 

 pointed oat the singular green " Moor Balls," which are found in abundance at 

 the bottom of these lakes, and in Alpine lakes, in North Wales, and in other 

 counties. "They consist of an articulated Conferva, (said Mr. Leightou,) which, 

 by the action of being rolled about the bottom of the lake by winds and currents 

 of water, forms rounded agglomerations, varying in size from a walnut to a 

 cricket-ball." Mr. Leightou also observed on the stonework and steps of the 

 terraces at Oteley, large masses of dense black stains, some of which he scraped 

 off, and on microscopic examination at home, found it to be a collemaceous 

 lichen, termed SynaUssa incina, Nyl., which has never before been detected in 

 Great Britain. 



SHKOPSHIEE AECHiEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY 

 SOCIETY. — The members had a very pleasant summer excursion on July 8th. 

 The first point of interest visited was Toug Church, the Hon. and Rev. J. E. 

 Orlando Bridgeman acting as conductor to the party. It contains some 

 interesting monuments, chief among which is an alabaster one to the memory (it 

 is supposed) of Sn* Richard Vernon and his lady, and another to the memory of 

 Sir Thomas Stanley, on which are the lines commencing " Not monumental 

 stone preserves our fame." Doniuyton was next visited. The church there is now 

 being restored. The Rector, the Rev. H. Ct. De Bunsen, received and guiiled the 

 pa) ly through the church, in which there is an ancient window supposed to 

 represent "Our Lord and His Mother," in iim Jieuv de lijs costume of A.D. 1280- 

 1300. The party proceeded to " Whiteladies," now a ruin, but once a flourishing 

 convent of Cistercian nuns. It contains some interesting monuments. Bosoobel 

 House next occupied the attention of the party. Here it was that Charles II. 

 found shelter after the battle of Worcester in 1651. Much interest was, as usual, 

 centred in the " Royal Oak" tree, in which the King is said to have hid himself 

 while Cromwell's troopers were in search of him. Whether the present safely- 

 guarded tree is the one which afforded a hiding-place to the royal fugitive is 

 matter of controversy. Mr. De Bunsen quoted the Rev. G. Plaxton, Vicar of 

 Donington, 1(590-1703, who in his day spoke of " the poor remains of the Royal 

 Oak " being fenced in ; Blount, Evelyn, and other authorities, who all spoke of 

 the way in which the original oak had been robbed by relic-hunters, &c. On the 

 other hand, Mr. De Bunsen read a letter from the Earl of Bradford, in which 

 his lordship discarded the usual stories of the owl flying out of the tree, and of a 

 pillow being placed in its bianches on which the King reclined; as also 

 be did the equally — as his lordship thought — untrustworthy accounts of 

 the destruction of the tree. In his lordship's family it had been 

 handed down from father to son that the tree was the same as that up which the 

 King, suddenly disturbed when out with the Penderels, hastily climbed; which 

 was described as a growing oak. Nine years after, when the Restoration came, 

 the tree was well known, and when the coppice was thinned it was preserved. 

 From father to son amongst the tenantry it ht'd been known, and his lordship, 

 who had known the tree for fifty years, was strongly of opinion that the tree 

 itself bore evidence of being of the necessary age, and not a sapling from the 

 original tree. The lower branches had, doubtless, been cut away, but not to the 

 extent described. An article appeared in the Gardeners' Chronicle, September, 

 1866, in which the writer holds that the opinion that the tree is a " seedling " is 

 absurd. He goes in for the great age of the existing tree as enthusiastically as 

 Lord Bradford does. He measured the tree to be lift, in circumference, but 

 does not say at what height from the ground ; and as " 18ft. to the crown, and, 

 perhaps, 20ft. more to the top." The Rev. J. Brooke, in 18.57, measured it, at 

 4ft. from the ground, to be lift. 4in. in girth : and, with the assistance of an 

 experienced timber merchant, who carefully compared it with other trees, came 

 to the conclusion that it was not then more than 150 years old. .Amonust other 

 authorities who had written about the tree, Mr. De Bunsen quoted Dr. Charlett, 

 of Oxford, who saw it in 1702, and who described it as " the trunk cf the Royal 

 Oak now enclosed within a round wall ;" on which Mr. Dale (who was appointed 

 curate of Donington in 1811,) writing in 1815, remarked " truncus, a stump, stock, 



