599 



road-sides and in old pastures. The only recorded Scottish station 

 in the Den of Cullen appears to me a most improbable one to be cor- 

 rect, and I think has not been confirmed by any botanist since the 

 time of George Don. When repeating the experiment some years ago 

 in Suffolk, of striking the plant to produce the falling away of the 

 corollas through their irritable contraction, I accidentally inhaled a 

 quantity of the loose flocculent tomentum, which gives the entire 

 plant the appearance of being powdered with flour, and experienced 

 very unpleasant sensations of heat and constriction in the throat and 

 chest for several hours afterwards, accompanied by cough and de- 

 fluxion from the mucous membrane of the nostrils, threatening in- 

 flammation of the respiratory organs. 



Verbascum nigrum. In similar places with the two foregoing spe- 

 cies, but very rare, or at least extremely local in the Isle of Wight. 

 Near Arreton and Merston ; Mr. W. D. Snooke !!! I find it in seve- 

 ral places about Arreton, but more especially abundant along the 

 hedge-banks of two fields on either side of the road from thence to 

 Merston, near the foot of St. George's Down. Very sparingly by Al- 

 verston farm, near Newchurch, at the extremity of the Lynch* Near 

 Ryde ; Miss Roberts ! but I have never seen it near this town myself. 

 Plentiful enough in various parts of mainland Hants, particularly on 

 the chalk. It abounds for miles all around Winchester, and occurs 

 profusely in some parts of Longwood Warren. Plentiful betwixt Pe- 

 tersfield and West Meon, and about Bordean Hill, Oakhanger. A 

 stately ornament to the road-sides and in the shady green lanes about 

 Clanfield, which it adorns in great plenty with its long wand-like 

 spikes of thickly clustered flowers, varying from deep golden to palish 

 yellow, relieved by the dark verdure of its broad root-leaves. Fare- 

 ham churchyard and Maindell ; Mr. W. L. Notcutt. Belgrave Lane, 

 Andover ; Mr. Wm. Whale. It is remarkable that the only Isle of 

 Wight stations for this plant are on the greensand, whilst across the 

 water it evinces its usual predilection for the chalk formation above 

 all others. 



Blatiaria. On chalky, gravelly or clayey banks, pas- 

 tures, and by road-sides ; a very uncommon plant in the Isle of 

 Wight, if not over the whole county, in a truly wild state ; not so un- 

 frequent in a dubiously indigenous or certainly naturalized condition. 



* Lynch is a name appiied to several woods in the Isle of Wight, but I do not 

 lcnow the precise force and limitation of the term. The British word for a grove is 

 said to be llunjn ; perhaps that and the modern provincialism may have a common 

 origin. 



