561 



I have gathered ripe capsules in abundance, not, I believe, very ge- 

 nerally perfected. It is certainly a pretty sight to behold the corn- 

 fields and road-sides adorned with ten thousand of its beautiful and 

 fragrant bells, wide opened and upturned to the midday sun of June 

 and July, or festooning some green hedgerow to its topmost branch ; 

 but neither its beauty nor delicate almond perfume can find it favour 

 in the eyes of the farmer, who too well knows it as a grievous adver- 

 sary in his moist corn-fields, twining around the stalks of the wheat, 

 and if not strangling the crop, doubling the labour and difficulty of 

 getting it in. The flowers wholly or partially close at night, or in 

 damp, cloudy, or rainy weather, as well as in the afternoon. I have 

 gathered this species at Boston, United States, where it is quite natu- 

 ralized, and pretty plentiful on banks about the city ; the flowers 

 uniformly smaller and paler than is usual in Europe. 



Convolvulus septum. Everywhere over the island and county, ex- 

 tremely common in moist hedges, thickets, and amongst bushes, in 

 osier-beds, damp gardens and shrubberies, also trailing over the sea- 

 beach occasionally, with leaves more or less fleshy. Var. (3. Flowers 

 pale rose-red or blush colour. In several parts of the Isle of Wight, 

 in considerable plenty. On wet slipped land, amongst bushes, above 

 the shore a little to the eastward of Old Castle Point, in some abun- 

 dance, September, 1840 ; also in a willow plot betwixt Dean farm 

 and Whitwell, and near Roude. Near Newchurch ; Dr. T. Bell Sal- 

 ter. East bank of the Yar, along the edge of Beckett's Copse, August 

 28, 1845 ; and with a decidedly rose-coloured limb to the flower, in 

 a large willow-bed betwixt Compton and Dunsbury farms, Fresh- 

 water, September 24, 1844. Dr. Salter finds the same deeper tinted 

 variety near Lymington ; in this island, however, the corolla is rarely 

 more than suffused with a faint blush of red, though in some parts of 

 England the flowers are found of a deep rose-colour, and I have my- 

 self gathered such in Guernsey. A similarly coloured variety appears 

 to be the commoner form in America of this widely-diffused species, 

 which under the foregoing or following states is indigenous over a 

 great part of both hemispheres.* In America the lobes of the leaves 

 are often rounded or angular, but not decidedly truncate ; the leaves, 

 petioles and stems either wholly or partially hairy, and the bracts, I 

 think, rather shorter in proportion to the tube of the corolla than in 

 the European plant. In this state it is the C. repens of Linnaeus &c, 



* In North America, New Holland, New Zealand, Western Patagonia (Darwin), 

 Java (Choisy). 



Vol. hi. 4 d 



