260 



road very unsatisfactory. I was quite too early for the Neottia, and 

 a range of bog which looked very promising yielded nothing. 



13th. Again heavy showers in the morning, which prevented me 

 from visiting Costicles Park. I took the rail-road to Brockenhurst, 

 whence an omnibus conveyed me to Lymington. Of Mr. Smith's 

 Scirpus parvulus I am afraid there is very little hope, at any rate I 

 was much too early for it. Sclerochloa Borreri is abundant, and 

 there is also some S. procumbens. The Borreri was only just begin- 

 ning to flower. The salt-works from forty are now diminished to 

 eleven. On the 14th I crossed at the ferry and walked up to Sir H. 

 Burrard's monument, a beautiful spot. I then continued along the 

 shore, where OEnanthe pimpinelloides is abundant, and from here to 

 Wareham and Lulworth it is a common plant, not at all particular as 

 to soil or situation, but rather, I think, flourishing best in a sandy 

 loam. Mr. Watson thinks the roots not sufficient to characterize the 

 plant, but I have never seen any when in flower or fruit where the 

 root was not decisive. The children eat the tubercles under the name 

 of earth-nuts. Carex divisa is abundant and very luxuriant, and we 

 meet with a little Artemisia Absinthium on a gravelly soil. Sene- 

 biera didyma and Linum angustifolium occur along the shore. 



I walked from Lymington to the station at Brockenhurst without 

 adding anything to the plants I had already observed. There is a 

 range of hills of a dry, white gravel, with boggy ground at the bottom, 

 which seemed very promising, but afforded nothing but the common 

 plants of the country. The railway took me to Poole. In the even- 

 ing a heavy storm came on, but the next day I walked to Bourne 

 Mouth, taking in my way the station of the Simethis bicolor, Kunth, 

 Anthericum planifolium, Linn. The idea suggested by its position 

 is that it originally occupied a space of perhaps twenty yards in di- 

 ameter, which was cut through by a road when the fir-plantations 

 were made, i. e., as J understand, about forty years ago. It grows on 

 open, barren heaths in the west of France, and I should think is not 

 at all connected with the fir-trees. There seems to be only this one 

 patch, at least I saw it in no other spot, though I calculated that my 

 various traverses of heaths and fir-plautations (there is nothing else 

 about Bourne Mouth) on this and the following days, could not be 

 less than thirty miles, yet it would be a singular chance that this road 

 should happen to divide the only patch of it in the country ; and my 

 observations go but a little way compared to the great extent there is 

 of this sort of soil in the Poole basin. 



When is a tree to be deemed naturalized ? Trees and shrubs, at 



