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had Mrs. Moody's own authority for the abundance of the Mezereon 

 there when remarked by herself, but on visiting these woods some 

 eight or ten years back, in the hope of procuring specimens, I utterly 

 failed to discover a single plant, but was shown by the woodman 

 thriving bushes in his garden, which had been introduced by him from 

 the copses, where he believed it to be then all but extinct, from the 

 avidity with which it was hunted out and dug up for transplanting by 

 the cottagers, either for their own use or for sale to the nurserymen. 

 Wherwell Wood, near Andover, and in Amphiel or Amfield Wood, 

 near Winchester, according to Mr. Wm. Whale, but who does not 

 give it on personal observation. " Selborne Hanger (in a part called 

 the Scrubs), amongst shrubs at the south-east end above the cottages," 

 — Kev. G. White in Nat. Hist, of Selb., — where it still grows, as I 

 learn from Mr. Binnie, gardener to my friend Thomas Bell, Esq. 

 The station is one perhaps open to some suspicion, yet may be as 

 truly natural as any of the rest. Woods near Andover, plentifully ; 

 Miller (Bot. Guide.) Through the kindness of Mr. Forder I was di- 

 rected to Old Park Wood, near Bishop's Sutton, March 21, 1848, and 

 where, a few days earlier, several good flowering specimens of Meze- 

 reon were marked down, by a person instructed to search for the plant, 

 previous to my coming to see them. But, alas ! some one had been 

 before hand with us, and carried off every flowering specimen they 

 could find, leaving numbers of young seedlings dispersed through the 

 wood, which in that state are overlooked or disregarded by these ra- 

 pacious collectors. A few of these seedlings I took up for cultivation 

 at Ryde, and continuing the search over the wood with my guide, 

 succeeded in detecting a very limited number of small flowering plants, 

 that had escaped observation from their diminutiveness, being scarcely 

 six inches high at most. The stems of the wild Mezereon are usually 

 simple or very sparingly branched, and seldom, I think, above a foot 

 or sixteen inches high, although it is probable they might attain to a 

 more considerable stature were they allowed to remain unmolested, of 

 which there is but little chance when once they are become large 

 enough to be conspicuous in flower. Until it blossoms, or when the 

 flowers are past, this shrub is apt to escape notice, from its simple 

 and slender habit aiding its concealment amongst the brushwood, and 

 from the resemblance the leaves bear to those of the Wood Spurge 

 {Euphorbia amygdaloides), a plant of the commonest occurrence in 

 every patch of copse or thicket throughout the county. For these 

 reasons it is a most difficult undertaking to procure fine native speci- 

 mens of Mezereon, which, were the plants left to flourish undisturbed, 



