1019 



sole station for this fine plant in the island, where it was tolerably 

 plentiful a few years back in one or two of the further meadows, but 

 has now become, I think, nearly extinct, partly, perhaps, through 

 draining, and because, being cut with the coarse herbage of the mea- 

 dow for hay, it has not, since Mr. Mill gathered it in that state, been 

 allowed to flower and seed, were it so disposed.* Very fine and pro- 

 fusely plentiful on a tract of boggy ground at Gower Pond, near Gos- 

 port, as noticed there by Mr. Borrer !!! f Portsea, Rev. G. E. Smith 

 in New Bot. Guide, but I do not know in what part of the vicinity of 

 that suburb of Portsmouth my •excellent friend finds it. In great 

 plenty in half-boggy, half-moory ground on the east side of Sowley 

 Pond, near Lymington, in ripe fruit, Sept. 26, 1849, but not flowering 

 in any abundance on that station. This, the tallest and stoutest of 

 our native Cyperaceae, grows, doubtless, in other parts of the county. 

 The excessively stiff, glaucous and deeply channelled leaves are 

 formidably armed along the edges and keel with hard cartilaginous 

 serratures, with incurved points, capable of wounding severely if in- 

 cautiously handled; in this respect, and in the structure of the bony 

 fruit, evincing its affinity to Scleria, of which genus the present is the 

 nearest European representative. 



Rliynchospora alba. On spongy, turfy bogs, wet moors, and marshy 

 spots on heaths and commons ; not very frequent, though I believe 

 generally dispersed over the county. Decidedly rare in the Isle of 

 Wight. On the marshy skirls of Lake or rather of Blackpan Com- 

 mon, in one or two spots abundantly. I remarked it on the moors at 

 Bournemouth, and I think also on Wolmer Forest ; at the former 

 place Mr. Borrer found it growing with Malaxis paludosa, and of un- 

 usual height, which served me as one mark to look for the Malaxis, 

 but that I could not fall in with last year in Mr. B.'s station. Short 

 Heath (near Selborne), Dr. T. Bell Salter. Titchfield Common and 

 Botany Bay (near Southton), Mr. W. L. Notcutt. Common about 

 Southampton, Mr. Winch in New Bot. Guide, and I have no doubt 

 in a great many other localities. The variety with brownish spikelets 

 (|3. sordida of Babington's ' Manual ') T do not remember to have met 



* The Rev. G. E. Smith lias remarked to me, that for the full development of ihe 

 inflorescence of Cladium Mariscus, the absolute contact of water with the roots seems 

 necessary, an opinion my own experience confirms. The soil of these meadows has 

 become too dry apparently for some years past to sustain any longer the Cladium in 

 healthy vegetation ; hence, doubtless, the more efficient cause of its rapid diminution 

 in quantity and stature since Mr. Mill first detected it at Freshwater. 



f Gomei Pond. 



