573 



county, as it is the prevailing species in some parts of the north of 

 England, and in Scotland, whilst in France their distribution is 

 exactly reversed, S. officinale being the ordinary Cornfrey of the 

 northern departments, and S. tuberosum the more common species in 

 the southern and Mediterranean provinces. About Montpellier the 

 latter abounds, where I do not remember ever to have remarked the 

 former. 



Echium vulgare. In dry sandy or chalky pastures, waste ground, 

 the borders of fields, by road-sides, and on old walls, not uncommon, 

 but less frequent in the Isle of Wight than on the mainland of Hants. 

 On Carisbrook Castle walls. Sandy fields betwixt Alverston and 

 Bardvvood, and about Queen Bower, frequent. Sandy fields behind 

 Colvvell Heath, one of which, June 17, 1841, was absolutely blue 

 with it, and where at the same time I gathered a variety with flowers 

 of a permanent and beautiful rose-colour. About Alum Bay, and in 

 numberless other parts of the island. Common about Winchester, 

 Andover, &c. I do not recollect having found this plant with white 

 flowers in our county, though not an unusual variety in England, but 

 1 have gathered a remarkable form of it in Sussex, about Old Shore- 

 ham, well known to Mr. Borrer, which, in the deep purple of its 

 blossoms, diffuse growth, and broadly elliptical stem-leaves, makes an 

 approach to E. violaceum, but wants the oblong root-leaves of that 

 plant, not to mention other differences between them. I think I once 

 found the same form near Exeter : it seems deserving of further at- 

 tention. In the Isle of Wight the Viper's bugloss is scarcely ob- 

 noxious to the farmer, and seldom intrudes upon his grain crops, but 

 in the corn-fields of Cambridgeshire the wheat is much infested by 

 its presence, and which, with the poppy and larkspur, it often helps to 

 make " unhospitably gay." My worthy friend Dr. Darlington, him- 

 self a practical farmer, in whom the utilitarian and the lover of nature 

 are happily blended, denounces the Viper's bugloss as a " vile foreign 

 weed," and prudently warns his agricultural brethren of Pennsylvania 

 against allowing it to gain a footing on their farms, since it has 

 already evinced itself a troublesome intruder in certain parts of the 

 United States.* When we consider what a number of European 

 plants have earned the rights of citizenship in that country, by com- 

 plete incorporation with the aboriginal flora, and how few America 

 has given us in return for our not always welcome immigrants, the 

 comparative immunity of its territory, from the host of injurious 



* Fl. Cest. p. 119, and 'Agricultural Botany,' p. 123. 



