176 



and are rendered more conspicuous by their issuing from the dense 

 shaggy tawny white tomentum and hairs. They are also set on in a 

 succession of irregular series; a series being comprised on each in- 

 ternode or division of the panicle : in the lower portion of which the 

 prickles are shorter and smaller, but increase in size and length up- 

 wards to the next uode or joint where they are longest, the longest 

 prickle being not unfrequently located immediately opposite to the 

 point from which the petiole of the leaf springs. 



" No. 13 of Bloxam's Fascic. Rub., R. vestitus," agrees with our 

 Shropshire plant, as does also Mr. Lees' R. vestitus in Steele's Hand- 

 Book, according to specimens from him. 

 Var. y. argenteus, Bell Salt. 

 Specimens gathered near Copthorn, near Shrewsbury (some of 

 which are given in some of the copies of the ' Fasciculus of Shrop- 

 shire Rubi' as /3. vestitus), have altogether a whiter softer closer- 

 pressed tomentose appearance, with a looser and larger extra-folia- 

 ceous panicle, the lower axillary branches of which are elongated, 

 and the leaves are narrowed at the base, becoming in general shape 

 rotundato-obovate, with less coarsely dentate margins. These, I 

 presume, may constitute y. argenteus of Bab. Syn. It should, how- 

 ever, be mentioned that I noticed that on the same bushes the usual 

 form of (3. vestitus was recognizable, and gradations from that variety 

 into the present one were easily traceable. The prickles on the 

 flowering stem and panicle are not rigidly straight and declinate as 

 in (3. vestitus, but curved and defiexed, though in similar, but more 

 irregular series. 



11. R. Leightouianus, Bab. Syn. 



This plant, which is fully and accurately described by my friend 

 Mr. Babington in his Syn. Rub., and which he was kind enough to 

 name in honour of me, is destined to be degraded from that enviable 

 post by my own hands, as the following observations will clearly 

 prove that it has no claims whatever to rank as a distinct species, 

 and cannot be retained even as a variety. 



Having no authentic specimen in my herbarium of the plant ga- 

 thered by Mr. Babington and myself at Haughmond Hill in Septem- 

 ber, 1837, I was for a long time completely ignorant of what plant 

 was really intended. Never suspecting leucostachys, /3. vestitus to 

 be identical with it, I year after year searched Haughmond Hill un- 

 successfully, and without finding any bramble which I could confi- 

 dently say corresponded with the description in Bab. Syn. In 1847 

 Mr. Babington sent to me a specimen of what he considered R. 



