26 CORRESPONDENCE, 
not be regarded like that of the ancient priest of Sais as an overratin 
of human power ! 
o 
COEEESPONDENCE. 
Ammi majns 07i the hanks of the Severn. 
I hare mucli pleasure in forwarding to you a small specimen of a plant (tlie 
Ammi majtis^ Linn.) wliicli I found this year on the banks of the Severn, near 
Gloucester. I also beg to enclose copy of a letter from Mr, Kippist, who 
placed my specimens before the Linnean Society. He says : 
" I showed your plant to our President, and he thinks it a mere form of 
Ammi majus, which is very common on the Continent ; in all probability it has 
been introduced with ballast, and, like many ahens so imported, may disappear 
in a year or two. A, glaucifolium has been referred by Bertoloni, Grenier and 
Godron, and other Continental authorities, to A. majtcs, but De Candolle, 
Woods (* Tourist's Flora'), and others, keep them apart. Certainly, your 
plant looks Tery different from the form of A, majits contained in Smith's 
herbarium, and which ia admirably figured in the ' Plora Grseca,' with the 
leaves all biternate, and the leaflets all lanceolate, beset along the entire mrirgin 
with niunerous close-set serratures. This form does not exist in the herbarium 
of Liunf3eu3, whose type-specimens of Ammi majus is very like jomt plant, but 
unluckily pinned to something very different." 
Perhaps you may be interested in the following description, which I have 
drawn up from one of my specimens : 
Root long and tapering, hard and woody. Stems procumbent at the base, 
from 1-2 feet high, much branched, angiilar, deeply striated, glabrous. Leaves 
all ternate, with short but distinct sheathing-foots talks ; leaflets wedge-shaped, 
deeply cut, all segments ending in a long, straight point. Umbels on long pe- 
duncles, either terminal or opposite the leaves ; general involucres of ternate, 
spreading bracts, with fine linear segments ; partial involucres of narrow-lanceo- 
127 (Plato t. ix. pp. 287-297; t. x. pp. 39-66, ed. Eipont.), should be named 
Diod, SicuL iii. 207, c- pp. 45 ; Ammian, Marcell. i. 17 (both confirming 
that the Egyptians knew Atlantis) ; M. Badly, * Lettres sur TAtlantide de 
Platon, et sur TAncien Histoire de TAsie,' Paris, 1779 (places Atlantis east of 
Europe) ; A. Humboldt, ' Examen Critique de I'Histoire de la Geographic du 
Nouveau Continent,* Paris, 1836, i. p. 167 (thinks the tradition based upon 
plutonic revolutions (Lyctony) taken place in historic time in the Mediterra- 
nean, and enlarged by the imagination) ; Branston, Misc. a. d. n. ausl. Lite- 
ratur, viii. (regards St. Helena and Ascension as possible remnants of Atlantis) ; 
Letrone, 'Essai sur les Idees cosmographiques qui se rattachent au nom 
d' Atlas,' 1S31 ; Bekkeri Comment, in Plat. t. ii. p. 395 ; Ch. Bunsen, 
* Aegypt^ns Stelle in der Weltgeschichte,' vi. (thinks Nimrod and his conquests 
to be the foundation of the tradition about Atlantis) ; P. Flourens, * Des Ma- 
nuscrits de Buffon,' Paris, 1860, p. 261 ; Luke Burke, Destruction of Atlantis, 
in Ethnol. Joum. 1848, July. 
