890 



campestre and Bryonia dioica become comparatively unfrequeM.* 

 Assuredly one of the most beautiful and graceful of British plants, 

 looking like some tender native of a warmer clime that has wandered 

 to our less genial shores courting their colder breezes. Most of the 

 devotees of Flora confess to an exclusive partiality for some one pro- 

 duction of her creative hand indigenous to the country of their birth. 

 Linnseus was fascinated with the symmetry (mother of all beauty as 

 he styles it) ever present to his vivid perception of loveliness in form, 

 in the blossoms of the little northern Trientalis, that (t fios gratissi- 

 mus " whose praises he has celebrated (I had nearly said sung) in his 

 truly poetical work the ' Lapland Flora.'t Smith describes the Water 

 Avens (Geum rivale) in terms of glowing admiration, which lead me 

 to conclude that pretty plant to have been a prime favourite with the 

 amiable editor of ' English Botany' : and if it be allowable in the au- 

 thor of these humble Notes to avow a predilection felt by such master 

 minds for one native plant above the rest, he would point to the Ta- 

 mils as the object of his especial preference. No other indigenous 

 vegetable comes up, I think, in elegance of habit to the Black Bryony, 

 as it displays itself on many a tall hedge-row, or along the margin of 

 some way-side thicket; its twining stems concealed beneath the 

 closely overlapping, prone directed or shelving, brightly varnished 

 leaves of firm texture and translucent green, their long, tapering 

 points, wavy margins and finely rounded bases, seeming to undulate 

 and curl and glide upon each other with simulated motion, as of a 

 swift and eddying stream descending in an easy, graceful curve from 



* In this part of England the Tamus is commonly called Bryony, sometimes Isle- 

 of- Wight Vine, and confounded with the true and almost equally ahundant plant of 

 that name, Bryonia dioica, whilst to many it is a nameless, though familiar object. 

 Its pretty designation of Our Lady's Seal, given it in a more poetic age, has become 

 universally obsolete except in books, and was perhaps never a vernacular one in this 

 land, nor can we, in these matter-of-fact, prosaic times, hope to see that name revived, 

 or a bard arise to give it currency in song. Possessing neither fragrance nor the flo- 

 rid charm of colouring, the simplicity of its starry flowers and the grace and elegance 

 of its polished foliage, unrivalled by that of any other native plant, can win the admi- 

 ration of such alone for whom form has equal or superior attractions over scent or 

 brilliancy of hue. My friend the dowager Lady Erskine tells me that the Black 

 Bryony is called in Wales Afal Adda, that is, serpent's meat, and that it is a preva- 

 lent idea in the principality that those reptiles are always lurking near the spot where 

 the plant grows. 



f " Nescio, quasnam gratia floris (Trient. europ.) adeo percellat oculos, ut fere effas- 

 cinare videatur visu contemplatorem suum ; forte a symmetria, pulchritudinis omuis 

 matre!'' Fl. Lappon. p. 104. 



