536 



over the ordinary spiny-leaved variety. The finest hollies I ever saw 

 were at the Lakes of Killarney, I think on Innisfallen Island ; as we 

 advance westward this tree acquires greater magnitude and elevation, 

 the cold of a deeply continental climate stunts its growth remarkably; 

 for though found wild in the forests of Prussia when it is sheltered by 

 adjacent trees, it resists with difficulty the winter in the Botanic Gar- 

 den at Berlin, and even at Vienna I have seen it treated as a green- 

 house shrub. The common holly of North America, T. opaca, is so 

 much like the European, as to have been thought a variety merely of 

 the latter. The leaves are precisely similar, but of a yellowish green, 

 and opaque, without that polish and lucidity which renders ours so 

 much the handsomer tree. The berries are of a duller scarlet, and 

 the growth of the branches less compact and bushy, whilst the termi- 

 nal shoots are much shorter, more slender, perfectly ligneous, and 

 covered with a brownish bark like the older wood ; whereas in our 

 holly the extreme shoots are much longer, thicker, and succulent, 

 with a soft green or purplish epidermis. This last character, which I 

 do not find noticed by any author, I have verified by constantly re- 

 peated examinations of the wild plant over a great range of soil and 

 climate, and found it to hold good without an exception : our present 

 diagnostic formulas are inadequate to the perfect discrimination of 

 these two species. The berries of the holly failed notably in quantity 

 last year, both here and in other parts of England. 



Wm. A. Beomfield. 

 Eastmount House, Ryde, Isle of Wight, 

 April, 1849. 



(To be continued). 



BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



Friday, April 13, 1849.— John Edward Gray, Esq., F.R.S., Presi- 

 dent, in the chair. 



Dr. Mitchell, of Nottingham, and F. Dickinson, Esq., of London, 

 were elected members. 



Mr. H. Taylor exhibited specimens of Anemone ranunculoides, 

 which he found still growing at Abbotts Langley, Herts. 



Mr. G. Maw presented a specimen of Linaria supina, Desf., dis- 

 covered by him at St. Blazey's Bay, Cornwall, in March last. 



The continuation of Mr. Woodward's paper * On the Flora of 

 Gloucestershire ' was read. — G. E. D. 



