203 



Mimuli, and Martagon lilies, which are registered as growing for a 

 season on some lonely rubbish-heap. That a great many plants lately 

 introduced into this country are fairly in the way of becoming " natu- 

 ralized," cannot be doubted ; but it is well to keep them in a provi- 

 sional list till they have proved their qualifications for permanent resi- 

 dence in their adopted country. 



Amongst the doubtful natives there is one for which I wish some 

 botanist would speak a good word — the chesnut; perhaps some day 

 it will be found in that old and little-explored herbarium the tertiary 

 strata, although Mr. Bowerbank has failed to pickle any from Shep- 

 py ; and meanwhile it might be inquired whether any of our ancient 

 structures, like the roof of Westminster Hall, were built of home-grown 

 chesnut, or whether it is only the sessile-flowered oak timber, as Mr. 

 Cooper suggested. 



Those who live in the country, especially in the eastern counties, will 

 witness, not without regret, a change going on in the distribution of 

 our wild plants, which threatens to be as complete as any change re- 

 lated by the geologist. Every year the habitats for the more interest- 

 ing plants, those which have small power of multiplying or migrating, 

 become fewer, and half a century hence botanists will doubt whether 

 the Pyrola, Vacciniums, Andromeda, Convallaria multiflora, Oreopte- 

 ris, Lycopodia selago and clavatum, &c, ever grew in Norfolk. In 

 their place we shall have a number from amongst that kind of plants 

 which in the 'London Catalogue' are said to be "imperfectly natu- 

 ralized." 



S. P. Woodward. 



July, 1848. 



Note on the Loose and sometimes Incorrect manner in which the 

 Time of the Flowering of Plants is given in our Manuals of 

 British Botany. By C. Drew Snooke, Esq. 



I do not know whether in the pages of the * Phytologist ' attention 

 has been at all directed to the loose and sometimes incorrect manner 

 in which the time of plants' flowering is given in our Manuals of 

 British Botany. A greater degree of exactitude in this respect seems 

 highly desirable, and would, I presume, be easily attainable, if those 

 botanists who, like myself, are but tyros in the science, were to have 

 their attention directed to this subject as one within the compass of 



