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walls, hedge-banks and amongst com, throughout the county and Isle 

 of Wight. Of extremely diminutive size, often not half an inch in 

 height, on the sandy spit below St. Helens, opposite Bcmbridge, and 

 which I was once nearly mistaking for V. verna. " Between Kings- 

 ley and the New Inn near the line of the military road (from Farnham 

 to Petersfield) there is a very remarkable small annual Veronica, ap- 

 proaching closely to V. verna, It is most abundant in that sandy 

 district, and I wish to call attention to it, as it is, I expect, something 

 out of the common way. It cannot be V. arvensis, though at first 

 sight it appears nearest to it." (Mr. Wm. Pamplin in litt.). If not 

 the above dwarf form of V. arvensis, or actually V. verna, there is a 

 possibility of its proving to be either V. preecox or acinifolia, both 

 natives of the north of France and of Germany. Circumstances have 

 for two seasons frustrated my intention of going in quest of Mr. 

 Pamplin's plant, which must be looked for early in the year, as it 

 soon dries up in that arid district and disappears for the summer. I 

 hope to be able to do so next spring, and to be rewarded for my 

 trouble with one, if not more, of the three species above mentioned. 

 The neighbourhood of Petersfield is on every side of the town a 

 glorious country for plants, whether we explore its low sandy districts, 

 its bogs, moors, and ancient forest ground of Bere and Wolmer, or, 

 ascending the precipitous chalk range to the northward, dive into the 

 dark recesses of the majestic beech-hangers of Froxfield, where the 

 richly wooded scenery of Stoner Hill and the neighbouring summits, 

 covered to their highest points with luxuriant timber, broken here 

 and there with teeming fields of wheat and barley, stretch in long 

 succession east, west and north, embracing the scarcely less elevated 

 and steep slopes of Bordean Hill, and the bosky hangers of Hartley, 

 Nore Hill and Selborne. So abrupt and strongly defined are the out- 

 lines of these chalk hills, and so precipitous their flanks, that we may 

 almost excuse the epithet of " majestic mountains" applied to them 

 by Gilbert White, and repressing the smile inclining to play over our 

 features at this magniloquent phrase, join with him in ascribing to 

 their bold contour somewhat of alpine sublimity. The resemblance 

 in the scenery of Stoner Hill to some of the lower mountain passes 

 in Italy or Switzerland, I have heard remarked upon by persons who 

 had seen both ; nor do I think that in this instance their imagination 

 has so far got the better of their judgment as not to have much of 

 truth on the side of the assertion. 



Veronica agrestis. Common everywhere in waste and cultivated 

 ground, fallows, on and under walls, banks &c. A somewhat remark- 



