♦308 TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE [Sess. i.xiv. 



The first annouacement with which I am acquainted of 

 this plant occurring in the British Isles appeared in the 

 '•Journal of Botany," p. 22, 1894, from the pen of Mr. X. 

 Colgan. It was gathered in September 1893 by Mr. C. 

 B. Moffat, in scattered patches for a distance of about three 

 hundred yards on the Xorth Bull, a sandbank which runs 

 along the northern shore of Dublin Bay for some two 

 miles, and is separated from the mainland of county Dubhn 

 by a muddy creek a quarter of a mile in width. Here the 

 I^lant grows vigorously among low sandhills and in associa- 

 tion with Psamma arenaria, at a point remote from any 

 house or garden. 



On pages 104-lOG of the same Journal, ]\[r. Colgan 

 made a further contribution to the subject by giving some 

 information which he had received from a nurseryman of 

 Xewry, who said that he had liad it in cultivation about 

 fifteen years as an ornamental white foliaged bedding plant, 

 and it was widely distributed for that purpose ; and the 

 writer goes on to suggest how from its being often used to 

 make up breast l.)ouc[uets, which may have been thrown 

 away by some. visitor to the North Bull, and have got covered 

 with sand, its occurrence there would be thus accounted 

 for, Mr, Smith, the gardener of Lord Ardilaun's at Saint 

 Anne's Clontarf, which is distant only about a mile in a 

 straight line from the sandhills station, says they had the 

 plant, which they called Siberian Wormwood, in cultivation, 

 he thought, for twenty years, and he used it extensively 

 for carpet-bedding, as it was very easy to train in all 

 shapes, and kept dwarf. He added tliat ruljljisli from the 

 garden was carted to the foreshore, this foreshore being the 

 inner sliore of " the muddy creek, a quarter of a mile in 

 width, which separates the North Bull from the mainland," 

 Mr, Colgan suggests : " A few scraps of the Artemisia, 

 probably fragments of creeping rootstock, are shot out with 

 other garden rubbish at low tide ; the rising water fioats 

 them off, and a westerly breeze, driving them across the 

 narrow channel, leaves them stranded on the low shores 

 of the North Bull as the tide ebbs. Then the fragments, 

 with vital powers nowise impaired by a few hours' innuersion, 

 are swept by the winds across the smooth, low, sandy 

 tracts, until finally arrested by the fringe of J'samma along 



