407 



river Itchen, at Winchester ; Mr. Babington !!! Christchurch ; Mr. 

 Borrer. I find it plentifully with the last in clear streams around the 

 city, as in Winnalwater meadows, and growing in such quantity as 

 to prove a great nuisance to the mills built over their swift and spark- 

 ling torrents. In the autumn, when the old stems decay and part 

 from the ground, they accumulate by degrees, and form floating 

 islands of great thickness and extent, blocking up the channel and 

 floodgates, and unless prevented, clogging the mill-wheels. Such an 

 island, of, I should say, forty or fifty yards in length and ten or 

 twelve in breadth, I saw last summer floated away through the side 

 sluice for the escape of the water when the mill is standing, at one 

 of the principal flour-mills of the city, and the length of time con- 

 sumed as the vast mass of entanglement sluggishly glided out of sight 

 beneath the archway, though urged forward by poles, plainly showed 

 the great weight of matter collected and its power in obstructing the 

 stream. I have not yet had an opportunity of carefully examining 

 this recent addition of the Rev. W. H. Coleman's to the British 

 Flora. 



JEthusa Cynapium. Frequent, and occasionally abundant in the 

 county and Isle of Wight, in weedy gardens, corn-fields and waste 

 ground. In 1838 I observed an extensive wheat-field at Beanacre 

 in this island, quite overrun with it. 



f? Fceniculum officinale. On waste ground, banks and cliffs along 

 the coast ; apparently rare in Hampshire, nor am I quite satisfied 

 that it is truly indigenous to the county, though clearly so on many 

 parts of the southern and eastern shores of England.* Very abun- 

 dantly, and perhaps truly wild, on extremely steep banks facing the 

 sea at the east side of Ventnor Cove, Isle of Wight, where it has ex- 

 isted to my knowledge long anterior to the buildings that now fill the 

 cove. On a bank betwixt Luccombe and Shanklin in plenty, but in 

 a spot not quite beyond suspicion. Occasionally about the borders 

 of fields in several parts of the island, but mostly in single clumps, 

 and in places unlike its truly natural stations. Plentiful on the 

 south beach, Hayling Island, but only near the buildings and an 

 abandoned garden, though it is possible it may not have had anything 

 to do with one or the other, since the locality is just such as this spe- 

 cies usually selects. The state of the pith in this plant affords no 

 constant character ; it is usually, I find, perforated in the centre with 



* Certainly native : for instance, in Pegwell Bay, near Ramsgate, at Paignton, 

 near Torquay, and various other places. 



