970 



observed, for perhaps a couple of centuries or more. Most of the 

 recorded stations are of very recent date, but it is said to be mentioned 

 as fouud wild in Yorkshire so long back as 1770, or thereabouts, in 

 Hull's ' British Flora,' a work I have not myself seen. In the Turk's- 

 cap Shaw at Woodmanston, about one mile from Banstead and four 

 from Epsom, in Surrey, where I gathered it in profusion, July 5, 1835, 

 and communicated specimens, from which the beautiful figure in 

 E. B. Suppl. iii. t. 2799, was made, no plant could have a more per- 

 fectly indigenous aspect; and it appears, 1 am told, equally so in other 

 parts of that county, and in Kent and Essex. Gmelin (Fl. Sibirica, 

 i. p. 44) says it abounds throughout Siberia to Ochotsk, lat. 59^-, and 

 Kamtschatka. This last peninsula, lying under the same parallels as 

 Great Britain, resembles Newfoundland in its climate, and like that 

 island is infinitely colder at all seasons than England, the summers 

 in both being extremely moist, chilly and variable, snow lying at the 

 sea-level in the harbour of St. Peter and St. Paul very commonly till 

 the middle or end of June.* 



Obs.— Simethis bicolor, very recently discovered on raoory groun d 

 about two miles west of Bournemouth towards Poole, but within the 

 Dorsetshire boundary, it can hardly be doubted, will be discovered ere 

 long on the Hampshire side of that vast heathy tract called the Poole 

 Basin, which is as remarkably uniform in its botanical as in its geo- 

 logical features. I visited the station, which is very close on the 

 borders of this county, by Mr. Borrer's directions, in October last, 

 and found the dried remains of the leaves, stems and flower-stalks. 

 Its detection still more recently in Ireland fully confirms it as a ge- 

 nuine native of Britain, and leads us to hope that it will ultimately 

 prove indigenous in many parts of the south-west of England. An- 

 thericum ramosum and perhaps A. Liliago ought, one would suppose, 

 to grow in England. The former especially is widely spread over 

 Europe, and is frequent in the north of France, and in most countries 

 of the continent to Denmark and Sweden. 



* The mean heat of the three summer months at St. John's, Newfoundland (lat. 

 47° 34'), is helow that of Edinburgh (lat. 55° 57), and the other seasons are colder in 

 a still greater degree. I have myself seen ice in huge masses on the shore of the ex- 

 treme south point of Newfoundland in the middle of July ; and the climate of St. 

 Peter and St. Paul, in Kamtschatka, from its higher latitude (53° 10') and extreme 

 eastern position (long. E. 159° 30') is still worse than in Newfoundland ; for although 

 far less rigorous than that of Siberia in winter, it is miserably deficient in positive 

 warmth at all times of the year, like southern Patagonia. Yet does Kamtschatka 

 produce many very fine plants of the natural orders we are now treating of, in Lilium, 



