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county, and certainly not so to the Isle of Wight. On Ryde Dover 

 formerly. Seen at Binstead, Cowes, St. Lawrence, and elsewhere in 

 the island, but in no fixed stations. Frequent in cottage gardens, 

 and when once introduced not easily got rid of. Said to drive away 

 moles, and the large, unripe capsules have been sometimes ignorantly 

 pickled for capers, hence the common name of Caper-bush in Hants, 

 which we may further suppose to have been appropriately given it 

 from the saltatory movements the condiment so prepared would be 

 apt to excite in such as partook of it. Certes we may imagine at the 

 least, such pungent sauce to elicit a reply like that of the first lieute- 

 nant, on the soup at the captain's table, into which the contents of a 

 whole bottle of cayenne had accidentally been transferred, who, when 

 the necessity for patient endurance which the etiquette of the service 

 imposed, was removed by his superior asking if he did not find the 

 soup a little too highly seasoned, abruptly made answer, " smart eat- 

 ing, certainly, Sir, smart eating !" The Caper Spurge is said to be 

 truly wild in a few localities, as at Ufton, near Reading, springing 

 up in dry, stony thickets for a year or two after they have been cut, 

 and I have myself seen it perfectly naturalized, if not indigenous, on 

 that curious rocky islet, the Steep Holmes, in the Severn. In this 

 county Dr. Macreight gives " woods at Selborne," as a station for E. 

 Lathyris, in his ' Manual of British Botany,' but in a communication 

 with which that gentleman favoured me in reply to an application I 

 made to him for particulars, he expresses an opinion that the species 

 is not indigenous to the station in question. 



Mercurialis perennis. In woods, thickets, copses, on hedge-banks 

 and in moist, shady, bushy places ; most abundantly in all parts of 

 the county and Isle of Wight. One of the most social of our native 

 vegetables, often covering the surface of the ground in our damp 

 woods to the utter exclusion of all other plants ; it is also remarkable 

 as being one of the earliest herbs to appear above ground in the 

 spring, and the latest to die down on the approach of winter. In mild 

 seasons it may be found in flower at the close of February, before its 

 leaves are unfolded,* and numbers of the stems survive and retain 

 their leaves tolerably green into the second year. Both our native 

 species turn partially blue in drying, and perhaps contain indigo, or 

 some analogous principle, which, after vitality is extinguished in the 

 plant, absorbs oxygen, and becomes apparent by precipitation in the 



* la 1843 I gathered M. perennis in flower in this island as early as the 9th of 

 February. It is always fully in bloom here in March, continuing to flower on into 

 May. 



