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everywhere, mingled, in the invigorating air of these uplands, with the 

 sweetness of many a mountain flower. On some well defined tracts 

 of a lighter green, which are probably watercourses in winter, H. viri- 

 dis occurs, though more sparingly, with Botrychium lunaria on several 

 dry knolls farther to the south ; and about the margin of a rivulet in 

 the same direction, Lycopodium selaginoides. Near this spot, on one 

 occasion, I gathered L. Selago, thus making four out of the six British 

 species of this genus, within a very short distance of each other, on 

 one hill-side. On the banks of this stream, still lower down the hill, 

 a friend used to gather Jungermannia tomentella with calyces, al- 

 though never lucky enough to find it in fruit ; and another orchid, not 

 very frequent with us, Neottia Nidus-avis, grows in the same neigh- 

 bourhood, along with Bartramia arcuata, Hypnum brevirostre, 

 Hookeria lucens, and Neckera crispa, all plentifully in fruit in their 

 season, with other Cryptogamia, the names of which it is unnecessary 

 to recapitulate. 



The extension of the empire of cultivation is all very good ; 

 but one of its results is occasionally not a little annoying. The 

 plough is rapidly assuming a supremacy over one of the best, if not 

 the very best, botanizing grounds about Dumfries — the borders of the 

 pond that supplies water-power to Stakeford Foundry, known to cur- 

 lers, skaters, and truant school boys as Maxwelltown Loch. A year 

 or two bygone, urged by the apparition, a few months previously, of se- 

 veral cartloads of tiles about the spot, I visited it for the purpose of 

 securing what I feared would be a last bundle of Eriophorum pubes- 

 cens. Instead of the object of my search, however, I found a very 

 flourishing crop of Solanum tuberosum in lazy beds; and the disap- 

 pointment was the occasion of a not very patriotic couplet I find in 

 the margin of my Hooker. Drainage has also destroyed our locality 

 for the variety of Carex limosa honoured by some botanists with the 

 specific title of irrigua ; and I am very much afraid that Carex limosa 

 herself will be obliterated this year or next by the same process, sur- 

 rounded, as she is, in her only habitat in this quarter by land gaping 

 for potatoes. 



Is Carex muricata, Linn., a good species ? I gathered on the 10th 

 of July a few specimens of a plant which I have thus entered in my 

 note-book : — " Carex muricata. The spikelets of this plant are sterile 

 at their upper extremity, and generally six, always more than four in 

 number; the stems are from one and a half to two feet in length, as 

 long as, perhaps rather longer, than the leaves; and the fruit is smooth 

 on the greater part of its bordered margin, but rough at the beak. 



