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gist' be cognizant of such fraud having been perpetrated within the 

 parish of Berkswell, I shall feel obliged by his communicating the 

 fact through the pages of this useful magazine. But till such evi- 

 dence be produced, I cannot but believe that the above is an example 

 of what I have called the spontaneous appearance of P. Dryopteris 

 in a situation where it did not grow till of late years, and at a great 

 distance, too, from any known locality for the fern ; for so far as I 

 know, P. Dryopteris has never hitherto been recorded even as a 

 Warwickshire species. 



I must now return once more to Botrychium Lunaria on Coleshill 

 Heath, which, it might seem, I had almost forgotten. I could not 

 help observing that the surface of the ground on that part of the 

 heath where the Botrychium grew, had been burnt within these few 

 years for the purpose of clearing it of the heaths and gorse which 

 grew there. The burning of the ling, &c, I should guess had taken 

 place at least two, or perhaps three years before ; it had not destroyed 

 the heaths, gorse and other plants, for they had sprouted up again 

 vigorously since the conflagration. Is it possible that this operation 

 may have prepared the surface, and been the means of rousing the 

 dormant seeds of the Botrychium to their full development ? I ask 

 this question for information. Strange things, as regards the vegeta- 

 ble kingdom, are confidently said sometimes to follow a conflagration. 

 And a slight alteration of the surface of the ground, it is well known, 

 will often occasion an entire change in the vegetation ;* e. g., there is 

 a broad, green lane, a little common I might almost call it, near this 

 place, which I often cross, and which produces a remarkably fine turf 

 of short, close grass; the turf is often plundered for garden purposes, 

 and pared off" in thin layers, leaving the soil perfectly bare in patches of 

 some square yards in size. On these patches, I observe, there invariably 

 comes up a dense crop, not of the grasses, &c, which had previously 

 occupied the surface, but of Gnaphaliuui uliginosum. Again, to take 

 another instance, which, perhaps, is more in point, and at which I 

 have already hinted, I have somewhere read that in parts of America 



* Manures, too, are found greatly to affect the nature of the vegetation, and in a 

 way one knows not how to account for. An intelligent friend, who resided some years 

 in Leicestershire, himself an agriculturist, once informed ine, that lime from two dis- 

 tinct quarries was frequently employed in the neighbourhood as manure ; and that 

 after the application of one of these limes there always came up a plentiful supply of 

 white clover ; after the other sort had been used, no white clover appeared, but con- 

 stantly some other plant, which he named, the species of which I do not now re- 

 member. 



