755 



Indian plant, Batis maritima, which, like the former, is exceedingly 

 social, and covers the muddy margins of the lagoons and salt creeks 

 in Jamaica with a dense under-growth of yellowish green, visible at a 

 great distance. So similar is the Batis in external structure, aspect 

 and habit to a Salicornia, that on first meeting with it, I collected 

 specimens without the slightest suspicion that I was gathering any- 

 thing but a species of glasswort, and even supposed it to be only our 

 British S. herbacea, with the stems rendered very luxuriant and arch- 

 ing by difference of climate. Yet Batis maritima has no real rela- 

 tionship to Salicornia, but is placed by Lindley (The Vegetable King- 

 dom) as a tribe or suborder (Batidese) of Empetraceae. The plant is 

 dioecious, and the structure of the ripe fruit said to be unknown to 

 botanists, but from having no books to refer to at the time, and more- 

 over completely deceived by appearances into the belief of its being 

 only a Salicornia, I lost the opportunity afforded me of examining a 

 genus of uncommon botanical interest, for in the dried state the parts 

 shrivel and become undistinguishable. 



In the subjoined list of Atriplices indigenous to this county and 

 island, I am compelled to acknowledge my ignorance of the recent 

 species by which the genus in Britain has been augmented through 

 the labours of Mr. Babington ; ignorance not arising from any im- 

 pression of the futility of his praiseworthy exertions to elucidate this 

 most perplexing tribe of Chenopodiaceae, or to save myself the trou- 

 ble of following the teaching of that able botanist in the detailed de- 

 scriptions he has given us in the Manual, but simply through inability 

 to unravel the knot of difficulties which attend the discrimination in 

 their multitudinous forms and varieties of A. erecta, prostrata, pa- 

 tula, deltoidea and rosea, and from a conviction that British and fo- 

 reign authors apply the same names to very different plants, and that 

 the nomenclature is still in a very shifting and uncertain state abroad 

 as well as at home. For these reasons I prefer waiting patiently the 

 result of farther researches by those who are willing to devote their 

 time to a task of such labour and difficulty, rather than hazard giving 

 to our Hampshire species names which may hereafter be discovered 

 to have been falsely imposed. 



Atriplex nitens. This species must be expunged from the list of 

 Hampshire plants, so far as concerns its right to a place in the floral 

 census of the county, either as indigenous to or completely natural- 

 ized therein. I have lately met with it in several and distant parts of 

 the county, and clearly ascertained it to be still an object of cultiva- 

 tion in the gardens of the poorer classes under the name of French 



