532 



and 1843, and occasionally on the wettest bogs of the moors around 

 Rookley Wilderness. 



Erica cinerea. On heaths, commons and moors, also in dry barren 

 woods, and sterile, gravelly or sandy pastures ; most abundantly. 

 The white-flowered variety T found on Ningwood Common, near Yar- 

 mouth, in 1841, and it is noticed in the ' Hampshire Repository,' as 

 growing in the same places with a similar variety of the last species 

 across the water. 



N. B. — The beautiful southern and western E. ciliaris should be 

 carefully searched for on the forest land along the border of Dorset- 

 shire, since it occurs abundantly on the heaths around Corfe Castle, 

 in Purbeck, where I gathered it in 1841, on a botanical excursion to 

 Poole and its neighbourhood with my esteemed friend Dr. Salter, 

 who, though a native of that town, well acquainted with the botanical 

 localities in its vicinity, and gifted with eyes inferior to few in acute- 

 ness at detecting new plants on a ramble, was fated to have this fine 

 heath elude his penetrating glance. It was first added to the Dor- 

 setshire flora by W. C. Trevelyan, Esq., a few years previous to our 

 visit, and had been detected some time before in Cornwall, in various 

 parts of which county it is quite plentiful, though it had escaped all 

 the earlier botanists, and most of those of our own time in a way that 

 is perfectly unaccountable ; especially when we reflect that Corn- 

 wall, from the peculiarity of its vegetable productions, has always 

 been attractive ground to botanical investigators from the days of 

 Ray to the present moment. The history of this heath, and the ad- 

 ditions that are being made to the British flora, which seem to in- 

 crease in number every year, simply because that of observers 

 increases yearly, should teach us never to think any field, however 

 small, has yielded up the last ear into the hand of the diligent 

 gleaner, and that even in our thickly-peopled land, where field is 

 joined to field and house to house till there is no room left, full many 

 a flower will yet be found to have been born and to have blushed un- 

 seen hard by, if not amidst, the busiest haunts of men.* 



Vaccinium Myrtillus. In dry or stony woods, thickets, and ele- 

 vated heathy places, also on the highest chalk downs occasionally ; 

 not very general in the Isle of Wight, but I believe frequent over 

 most parts of the county. On Shanklin Down. Head Down, near 



* The detection of Cucubalus baccifer by Mr. Luxford in what may fairly be called 

 the heart of London, namely, the Isle of Dogs, is the extremest case in point that can 

 be cited. 



