669 



Dr. A. D. White. Sought for there in vain, July, 1849, the plant is 

 certainly extinct. In the former of these stations it grows in consi- 

 derable plenty, but very near some cottages. I strongly suspect this 

 plant is not an aboriginal in any part of the kingdom, or even of Eu- 

 rope, but to be of more eastern origin. I have never seen it in this 

 country or on the continent in any place where it was not likely to 

 have been introduced, generally close to houses or buildings of some 

 kind, and in no instance remote from the haunts of man. The genus 

 has its metropolis in Asia, especially Siberia, and I am inclined to 

 think the motherwort may have migrated westward with the nomadic 

 tribes that overran eastern Europe at the downfall of the Greek em- 

 pire. I have never met with this plant cultivated in rustic gardens, 

 like some others of former repute in medicine, nor can I find that the 

 motherwort is known by that or any other name amongst the herb - 

 doctors or the good women of this part at least of the realm. 



Wm. A. Bromfield. 



Eastinount, Ryde, Isle of Wight, 

 September 12, 1849. 



(To lie continued.) 



Botanical Society of London. 



Friday, September 7, 1849. — John Reynolds, Esq., Treasurer, in 

 the chair. 



The following donations were announced : — 



British plants from Dr. Mateer, Mr. John Tatham, Mr. Henry Ford- 

 ham, Mr. J. B. French, Mr. Thomas Moore, Mr. Robert Withers, Miss 

 A. M. Barnard, and Mr. T. C. Heysham. 



Mr. C. C. Babington presented specimens of Rubus pyramidalis 

 (Bab.) and Rubus incurvatus (Bab.), collected by him at Llanberis, 

 North Wales, in September, 1848. (These specimens were sent in 

 April last, but had remained at the Linnean Society, in a parcel ad- 

 dressed to a Fellow, who did not happen to call there until some 

 months afterwards). 



birthwort (Aristolochia Clematilis), which we were informed grows in plenty on a 

 hedge-bank at Borden Lodge, on the Forest, doubtless naturalized, as it is near Win- 

 chester; in both places it has probably existed beyond the memory of man, and has 

 become, in the latter station at least, an unconquerable weed, but its remedial uses, 

 together with its very name, have no memorials left them in the pharmacopeia of our 

 rustic Galons. 



