1007 



Myriophyllum alterniflorum. Pool close to the rectory at Shalfleet. 

 Extremely common in pools and watery pits on the heathy ground 

 about the western side of the Newtown River. I find it on slipped 

 land below the cliffs at Luccombe, but, as will be seen from the fore- 

 going stations, this species is far more frequent in West than in East 

 Medina. Var. @. Leaves extremely narrow. In vast abundance, and 

 flowering freely, in some old clay-pits in a rough, heathy waste a lit- 

 tle east of Cranmore farm, near Yarmouth and adjoining Ningwood 

 Common, as also on another piece of heathy ground near the western 

 arm of the Newtown River, along with T. latifolia. Abundant, but 

 not freely flowering, in the clay-pits of the brick-field at Lower Hamp- 

 stead, near Yarmouth. This variety differs in no respect from the 

 usual state of the species, excepting in the excessive narrowness of 

 the leaves, which are scarcely one-third of an inch wide. Frequent, 

 probably, over the rest of the county. Abundant in a pool on Hay- 

 ling Island. Covers acres in the shallows of Sowley Pond exclusively. 

 Besides the more universal names of Cat's-tail, Reed-mace, and some- 

 times (but erroneously) Bulrush, by which this genus is known, the 

 pistillate flower-spikes are called in this island Black-puddings, 

 Blackamoors, Black-heads and Bacco-bolts, from their likeness to 

 rolls of tobacco, and remoter resemblance to the other elegant articles 

 just enumerated. The heads of T. latifolia are employed, it is said,* 

 by the velvet weavers of Spitalfields for cleaning their work, and are 

 also sold to the poor as a cheap but efficient hat-brush. I have heard 

 of their being used here occasionally for stuffing mattresses, but the 

 property which the pappus possesses of felting, and its want of elas- 

 ticity, must make it a very unfit substitute for feathers. 



There seem good grounds for believing that T. minor will ere long 

 be confirmed to the English flora. In Hall's ' Flora of Liverpool ' it 

 is stated that there are specimens of this plant in the herbarium at the 

 Botanic Garden of that town, gathered in 1801, from a large marl pit 

 north of Little Crosby. I have myself a distinct recollection of hav- 

 ing seen examples some years ago, collected, I believe, in Kent, and 

 sent to the late Mr. David Don, in whose possession I feel pretty cer- 

 tain they were when I saw them, which must have been at the Lin- 

 nean Society. t The species is extremely local in Europe, but 



* Loudon's Mag. of Nat. Hist. vi. p. 367. 



f The Rev. G. E. Smith says that T. minor grows with T. latifolia in a dyke at 

 West Hy the, Cat. of Pis. of S. Kent, p. 60. If there he no misprint here of T. minor 

 for T. angustifolia, this would seem to confirm the reports and accounts of the occur- 

 rence of the former in England, as given ahove. 



