514 



Wake Green, and within the boundary line of Worcestershire, Os- 

 munda regalis, Equisetum sylvaticum, and Rubus suberectus grow ; 

 as, though the green is now entirely enclosed and cultivated, a few 

 plantations have been made where these bog plants have found a last 

 shelter. Such is not the case at Feckenham Bog, often mentioned 

 by Purton, and where, within thirty years, peat was cut and stacked 

 for fuel by the poor cottagers living there. The 'Midland Flora' of 

 Purton records Cyperus nigricans and Cladium Mariscus as denizens 

 here, with other bog plants ; but drainage has done its worst in this 

 locality, and not only is the "bare-worn common" denied to the cot- 

 tager, but the bog is cut off from the Worcestershire botanist. Broms- 

 grove Lickey, cut up and furrowed by the " greedy plough," has lost 

 almost all its rarer plants ; and last year when the Worcestershire Na- 

 turalists' Club met there, they were taken to the spot where it was 

 remembered only, that Vaccinium Oxycoccos once grew. The truly 

 indigenous plants of a district will, however, maintain their ground 

 obstinately, and should not be easily given up as lost by the botanist. 

 Campanula latifolia, almost eradicated at Malvern by the recent 

 enormous extension of buildings there, still keeps possession of the 

 bank of a once wild pathway ; and the elegant and mostly rare Carex 

 Pseudo-cyperus is abundant on the side of the road from Malvern to 

 Worcester, about Newland, where little pools and ditches, once open 

 to the great extensive Chace, yet remain under shelter of the hedges. 

 A little — very little — bit of heath land at present exists only two miles 

 north-west of Worcester, the relics of a former " Broadheath," where 

 Erica Tetralix still nestles ; but so rare is it now in the west of Wor- 

 cestershire, that in the whole district from Worcester to Tewkesbury 

 southwards, and from the former place to Ledbury, Herefordshire, 

 westwards, which I took as the limits for the plants of my Malvern 

 Flora, I could never find a single specimen of any Erica. 



Certain very rare species may, though truly wild, be limited to 

 such narrow spaces, that without accurate designation of their precise 

 position, the explorer may be easily baffled in his efforts to detect 

 their retreats. Thus Braunton Burrows, Devonshire, has been given 

 as the habitat of Scirpus Holoschoenus. But when I was at Ilfra- 

 combe, on making an excursion to these Burrows, I found an extent 

 of waste sandy and marshy ground, disposed in flats, hummocks, and 

 hollows, to the amount of more than two thousand acres, and bounded 

 on one side by the sea. I made many traverses across it in vain ; and 

 some botanists, disappointed like myself, reported it as lost at the sta- 

 tion, and I saw it so stated in a botanical publication. A second 



