1011 



deaux, to make its first appearance on approaching Potiers, after 

 which it became common, and about Bordeaux is everywhere to be 

 met with, ranging all along the western maritime departments of 

 France into Britanny as far as 48°, or perhaps higher.* Throughout 

 Italy no plant is more abundant than this Arum,f even in the most 

 open, sunny exposures, not being the shade and moisture-loving plant 

 that A. maculatum is, nor does it, like that, inhabit the more interior 

 countries of the European continent under its limitrophe parallels, as 

 Switzerland, Hungary, Austria proper, &c, where A. maculatum is 

 frequent. Yet I must own to having observed states of A. italicum 

 that seemed to connect it pretty closely with A. maculatum, which in 

 its turn often approaches its southern congener in size and outline, 

 and, as we have seen, in having the leaves occasionally marbled with 

 white. It is well known that in Portland Island a large quantity of a 

 beautifully white and highly nutritive farina is prepared from the tu- 

 bers of A. maculatum, which chiefly finds a market in London, for 

 the use of invalids, under the name of Portland Sago. Were the de- 

 mand general, the Isle of Wight could alone furnish an inexhaust- 

 able supply of this valuable production, now in a great measure 

 neglected, because not conventionally adopted as an article of con- 

 sumption by all classes. In ruder slates of society, mankind eagerly 

 seek out and appropriate those spontaneous gifts of Nature which in 

 more civilized communities are overlooked or contemned. The sa- 

 vage starves not, for the field and the forest are his granary on which 

 he relies for unbought and untoiling subsistence ; the poor of our land 

 perish if the hand of bounty be withdrawn, for they must be fed with 

 the purchased food which labour prepares for the rich as well as the 

 needy. It is probable the young, fresh leaves of our Wake- robin 

 might, when boiled, which would dissipate their acrimony, furnish an 

 excellent spring Kale, as do those of Caladium esculentum and other 

 tropical Araceae in the West Indies. As an object of cultivation, A. 

 italicum, from its larger size and therefore greater yield, would doubt- 

 less be preferable to our native species. 



Lemna trisulca. In clear, stagnant water of pools and ditches. 

 Ditches in Sandown Level, abundantly ; very profusely in those im- 

 mediately around the Fort. " Ditches in the marsh at Easton (Fresh - 



* I should never be surprized at hearing of its discovery in Devon and Cornwall. 



f At Rome, for instance, T remarked it on every bit of waste soil within the walls, 

 where, from its abundance and luxuriant growth, it forms a most picturesque adjunct 

 to the natural foreground, which the artist gladly transfers to his canvas. 



