702 



brooks, the sides of drains and ditches, also in moist woods ; by no 

 means rare in the Isle of Wight and the parts at least of Hants adja- 

 cent to the coast, being more frequent in the vicinity of brackish than 

 of fresh water. In the marsh ditches behind the Dover, Ryde, here 

 and there. Plentifully in the boggy part of the wood called Chapel 

 Corner Copse, on the west shore of the Wootton River, at its mouth. 

 More common in Freshwater Island* than elsewhere in the Isle of 

 Wight. At Norton. Plentiful in some of the marsh ditches at Easton, 

 and in salt-marshes along the Yar, and about a little pool in a mea- 

 dow not far from Yarmouth Mill. Pretty abundant on the boggy 

 parts of Colwell Heath, at its upper end. On the beach at Wolver- 

 ton, by St. Lawrence, near a spring ; the late Mr. Samuel Hailstone, 

 jun. ! Near Blackgang; Miss G. E. Kilderbee ! Blackgang Chine ; 

 Mr. J. Curtis in Brit. Entom. vol. iv. tab. 154. Banks in Colwell 

 Bay and in the marsh at Freshwater Gate, plentifully ; Mr. W. D. 

 Suooke in Fl. Vect. !!! Ditches at Schoolhouse Green, Freshwater ; 

 Mr. Charles D. Snooke in litt. In a low r , marshy meadow at Keyha- 

 ven, near Milford. In plenty in one of the boggy meadows behind 

 Stokes Bay, to the westward of Alverstoke. Hill Head ; Mr. Robin- 

 son in Mr. W. L. Notcutt's Cat. of Plants of Fareham in Phytol. ii. 

 211. The present species is stated by writers to occur in almost all 

 parts of the globe, but this must be understood with considerable li- 

 mitations. It is certainly not a very northern plant, and many of the 

 boreal countries of Europe want it altogether. In America it would 

 seem to be wholly absent, the S. Valerandi of American botanists 

 being a very different species, long confounded with our own, and now 

 called S. floribunda. Before I was aware of the separation, I was 

 struck with the difference of aspect in a Samolus 1 found in Alabama, 

 in wet woods along the Mississippi, and about Carrollton, by New 

 Orleans. S. floribunda differs from S. Valerandi in its much and dif- 

 fusely branched stems, shorter, less erect and subpaniculate racemes, 

 in its very slender, filiform, more spreading and generally straighter 

 pedicels, and notably in its far smaller flowers and capsules, the for- 

 mer very minute, scarcely half the size they are in the European 

 plant, the corolla but little exceeding the calyx in length. The 

 leaves are described as obtuse, and so they often are, but in the plant 



* The western extremity of the Isle of Wight, insulated by the river Yar, is called 

 Freshwater Island in old maps, as the eastern end, though less perfectly cut off by the 

 estuary of Blading, was called the Isle of Bembridge, terms which, though not now 

 in common use, very conveniently serve to designate these two well-defined districts. 



