984 



cluncles. A difference in the size and aspect of the plant led me to 

 examine it more carefully, when I found that the seed resembled that 

 of L. Forsteri in having the fleshy crest or appendage straight and ob- 

 tuse, and wholly without the hook-like curvature in which the same 

 appendage terminates in L. pilosa. I at once set it down for a re- 

 markable variety of L. Forsteri with the panicle of L. pilosa, and as 

 such preserved specimens in my herbarium, and sent others dried to 

 Mr. Borrer, who, from not having seen fresh capsules and seed, was 

 induced to pronounce it only L. pilosa, an opinion which led me to 

 pay no further attention to the plant at that time, and it was suffered 

 to lie unnoticed and almost forgotten, till last year, when the sight of 

 the dried specimens, and their striking difference of aspect from L. 

 pilosa and Forsteri, again prompted to a renewed investigation of the 

 plant in its native haunts. The result of a long and laborious exami- 

 nation of some hundreds of specimens, and comparison with as many 

 of the two allied species made on the spot at short intervals of time, 

 and in every stage of their growth, has gone very far towards showing 

 the Apse-Castle Luzula to be a species intermediate betwixt L. pilosa 

 and L. Forsteri, yet sufficiently distinct from either, and for reasons 

 which I shall adduce presently, by no means a mule production. 



This curious plant grows very abundantly at Apse Castle,* in two 

 or three places on sloping banks, under brushwood, in a dry, friable 

 sandy mould, sometimes by itself, at other times in company with L. 

 pilosa or L. Forsteri, or both, but in quantity much exceeding these 

 last.f The following directions will enable any person to find it in 

 one of its two principal stations with ease. Entering Apse Castle by 

 the footway across the fields from Shanklin and Cliff Farm, or pass- 

 ing the gate opening into the dell (Tinker's Hole), keep the left hand 

 green road or turf-walk, and proceed upwards till you come to the 

 plantation of pines, skirting which the road continues, leaving the dell 

 below on your right. Pursuing this walk, perhaps for a couple 

 of hundred yards, a narrow track or footpath emerges from it on the 

 right through the brushwood, which brings you in sight of a sloping 

 pasture-field nearly surrounded by wood, at the foot of which field a 

 brook parts it from the steep, copse-covered bank on its other side. 



* For an account of this retired and picturesque spot, see page 534. 



f It is worthy of remark, that L. pilosa and Forsteri abound most on that side of 

 Apse Castle nearest to America, and furthest from the part where our new plant 

 flourishes; yet although the two former grow copiously intermingled, or in patches 

 adjacent to each other, I find none of the third kind there at all. 



