MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 307 
and cut up with ditches. On August 23rd last, the writer found 
growing, in an apparently wild state on the fen, several plants which 
he refers to Willdenow's species Aster salignus. This species is nearly 
the only one, out of about seventy closely-allied Asters, which is a na- 
tive of Europe, while the rest are American. It grows wild in Ger- 
many and Denmark, in many places by the banks of rivers, and, 
therefore, might probably occur in Britain in such a locality as Wicken 
■Pen. It is not a plant in ordinary cultivation, and could not, there- 
fore, easily escape from a garden. Specimens from Wicken have the 
habits of wild plants. A living specimen has been placed in the Cam- 
bridge Botanical Garden. 
On the Destruction of Plantations at Drumlanrig by 
a bPECiEs of Vole. By Dr. Grierson. 
The ravages of one or more species of Arcicola, or Vole, in the plan- 
tations of Drumlanrig, in Dumfriesshire, have been for years increasing. 
As far as I can learn, this was not specially noticed until about the 
year 1852. Since then very great injury has been done. The voles 
seem to have migratory habits — at times appearing in vast numbers in 
plantations where they had not been previously noticed, and which 
they almost completely destroy. The destruction is principally anion 
the young trees of Oak and Ash. A ring of bark is gnawed from 
the stem close to the root, where it is hid by grass or moss, and this 
causes the death of the tree. Plantations are liable to these attacks 
until they are of more than twelve years' standing. The bark is 
almost wholly removed from trees of Holly, even that of the small 
branches. Larch and Pines, as far as I know of late years, have not 
been attacked, but I have heard of Larch plantations being much in- 
jured by what I presume to have been a vole. It is in the winter 
months that the destruction chiefly takes place, especially when the 
ground is covered with snow. I do not know of any like injury 
having been noticed in other localities in the south of Scotland, al- 
though it is recorded as having occurred in other places, as in the New 
forest. In the examination of hundreds of voles, obtained from the 
drumlanrig plantations, I distinguished two species, Arvicola pratemis 
and A. agrestis. The former bears but a small proportion in number 
to the latter— about one to twenty. Probably another species of small 
vole occurs in moorland districts, but it does not appear to injure 
