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curs as truly indigenous in my opinion as the celery {Apium graveo- 

 lens) to which it has long since given place at the table. I am not 

 prepared to state its distribution on mainland Hants. Mr. Notcutt 

 and myself find it at Porchester Castle, a suspicious station, but it 

 will probably be found in less exceptionable localities along the coast, 

 remote from which I have never seen it assume an undeniably wild 

 position. 



Alexanders was formerly much esteemed for the table, boiled, and 

 eaten like greens, even in the time of Dioscorides. Gerarde says, 

 " the roote hereof is in our age served to the table raw for a sallade 

 herbe." It is not a little singular that this plant has long survived 

 all record of its use in the Isle of Wight, its very name has been quite 

 forgotten, and by a strange confusion of ideas, it shares with the ge- 

 nuine Apium graveolens the appellation of wild celery, and by that 

 only is it known. This is the more remarkable, as both species are 

 common natives of the island, and the latter of course in cultivation 

 in every garden, whilst the former is constantly obtruding itself on 

 observation in hedges and pastures about places where there is every 

 reason to believe it must at one time have been itself a well-known 

 and esteemed garden esculent. 



N. B. — Echinophora spinosa has been indicated to me in a list of 

 plants growing near Yarmouth, in this island. There can be little 

 doubt but that an error was committed in this instance, notwithstand- 

 ing there is every reason for believing the species to have formerly in- 

 habited sevei'al parts of our coast, even to within a late period, as the 

 authority for its occurrence is respectable, and not that of a single 

 observer merely. Though quite a southern plant, its range may ex- 

 tend, like that of many other maritime species, considerably to the 

 north of its ordinary limits, where circumstances are favourable to its 

 propagation. 



Adoxa Moschatellina. In moist, shady places, woods, groves, on 

 hedge-banks and about the roots of trees ; very frequent in the Isle 

 of Wight, and as far as my observation extends, over the entire 

 county. Common about Ryde, at St. John's, &c, where I gathered 

 it in fine fruit, which I believe is not very usually perfected. The 

 herbage of Adoxa has a perceptible musky scent in moist weather, or 

 when wetted by dew or rain ; that of the flower is less transient, 

 more penetrating, with some pungency, and to myself recalls the idea 

 of dilute nitric or hydrochloric acid, or the smell given out by slightly 

 heated steel, as when a razor is dipped into warm water. Sir James 

 Smith, who appears never to have seen the fruit of Adoxa, describes 



