1861.] KENTISH BOTANY. 181 



We were singularly favoured with very fine weather, a most 

 important item in the success and enjoyment of a botanical tour. 

 The summer of 1860 will be long remembered as one of the 

 most inclement or unpropitious seasons which any one now liv- 

 ing has ever seen. Two fine days in succession were quite as 

 unusual, as the fulfilment of predictions of a change of wea- 

 ther at the change of the moon. Where we happened to be all 

 this weelc, the first in September, the weather was fine, without 

 showers, and with a bracing, for the most part east or south 

 wind. We had a few drops, or a slight sprinkling of wet before 

 we reached Ash, and when there, the road gave unmistakable in- 

 dications of a heavy shower. The nearer we approached the sea, 

 the wetter was the road ; and the landlord of the Bull, Sandwich, 

 informed us that they had there a considerable fall of rain. Had 

 we started only an hour earlier, our walk to Sandwich would not 

 have been quite so pleasant as it happily was. 



Our first plant (for this day, strictly speaking, was the com- 

 mencement of our journey) was picked up on the roadside be- 

 tween Canterbury and Littlebourn, on the left-hand side of the 

 way, near a path across what was a park in not very remote 

 times, but now a pasture field, and where there is a couple of 

 gateway pillars, not unhandsome, and of the style of similar 

 erections of the age of Queen Anne or George I. ; the place 

 is not above a mile from Canterbury or from St. Augustine's 

 Abbey. This is a very minute description of the locality ; but 

 the plant Ave saw there is rather a scarce species. We could count 

 on our fingers all the places where it has been seen in Surrey, 

 Hertfordshire, and Cheshire, and leave some digits uncounted 

 after completing the tale. Therefore the station of Dipsacus 

 pilosus is thus circumstantially described. It grows here both 

 fine and plentiful, well ensconced behind brambles and briers, by 

 which it is both protected and concealed till about this season, 

 when it overtops its prickly shelter. If as much space is filled 

 with our subsequent discoveries as Avith the first, this article will 

 swell far beyond the usual limits, Avithin which it is necessary, 

 for the sake of space, to restrain such accounts. 



CalamintJta officinalis appeared on the roadside, and, as usual, 

 in no very great abundance. In a field on the left, cultivated 

 with cabbages and other culinary vegetables, Llnaria Elatine, 

 Stachys arvensls, and Anthemis arvensis were found in plenty. 



