526 



about Buriton ; Rev. Messrs. Gamier and Poulter in Hamps. Repos. 

 Chalky hills by Maple Durham ; Merrett's Pinax, p. 104. I have no 

 station to record for this plant in Hampshire within many miles of 

 the coast, but I have gathered it within a very short distance of the 

 sea in the Earl of Burlington's park, near Eastbourne, Sussex, and at 

 a very slight elevation, if any, otherwise the species is one of the hill 

 country, preferring the summits and sloping sides of our lofty chalk 

 downs to the woods and banks of the low grounds. The climate of 

 the Isle of Wight is doubtless somewhat too maritime, or, in respect 

 to temperature, though not to longitude, too westerly for a genus so 

 eminently eastern in its distribution as is Phyteuma and (with a few 

 exceptions) the order to which it belongs. The range of this species 

 in Britain is indeed singularly circumscribed, and its polar limit re- 

 markably abrupt ; for though so frequent and abundant on the chalk 

 ranges of Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Hants north of 51° I am not 

 aware that a single locality is on record for this plant on the continu- 

 ation of the same cretaceous system beyond 51° 30', or the latitude 

 of London ; some dozen of miles, or perhaps less, totally terminating 

 its progress northward. To the westward it seems almost as rigidly 

 limited. It has, I think, been found of late years in East Wilts 

 (Devizes ?), but fails wholly in Dorsetshire, and is apparently wanting 

 throughout the south-western or New Forest district of this county, 

 where the vegetation commences to assume an occidental character, 

 and the soil for the most part ceases to be calcareous. A beautiful 

 plant in its wild state, the globose heads of curiously incurved flowers 

 of the deepest and richest ultramarine are stated in E. B. to be less 

 conspicuous in cultivation, which one would not have suspected, as it 

 varies greatly in size and luxuriance on its native hills, and in the 

 depth of blue in the flowers, which are sometimes white. The (in 

 Britain) still more eastern, though on the continent more northern 

 P. spicatura, should be looked for in the woods of East Hants, as 

 there is a possibility its range may ultimately prove co-extensive with 

 that of the present species. In June, 1835, I spent two entire days 

 in seeking for this plant in the woods about May field and Waldron, 

 having none but general indications to the localities, when I at last 

 came upon it in plenty in a copse which had been recently cut on the 

 Hole farm in Waldron, growing with wild columbines (but not with 

 Actaea) just as Pollich describes it as commonly doing. The tall 

 stems of the Aquilegia caught the eye from afar, and I hailed their 

 appearance as an omen of the good success which a few moments af- 

 terwards crowned a search I was on the point of giving up as hope- 



