1861.] REVIEWS. 281 



by a cowleech or a horse-floctor (forgive us, ye practitioners of 

 the uoble art of healing the many ills fiesh is heir to) where 

 grows Hound's-tongue ? We should answer unhesitatingly, Be- 

 tween New Brighton and the mouth of the Dee, along the 

 sandhills which skirt the Wirral sea- ward. It appears that 

 the plant is quite as abundant on the sandhills between Lythara 

 and Blackpool. This is a fact worth knowing; for the spe- 

 cies, though not to be accounted scarce in the interior of our 

 island, would not, in many counties, afibrd an unlimited sup- 

 ply of the article. It is the root which the Surrey leeches 

 employ, and they can get but a little of it, and in the winter 

 cannot find it at all. They might soon procure a cartload 

 from the Wirral at any period of the year. 



Hyoscyamus niger is another valuable officinal plant of this 

 district. It is not stated that it is plentiful here, but it is very 

 abundant in the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton. 



The Cruciferce and the UmbeUiferce are well represented in 

 this Flora. The rarer plants of the first- mentioned group are 

 Lepidimn Smithii, Cochlearia danica, Caki.le maritima, Brassica 

 monensis, Sisymbrium Sophia ; most of these occur near Lythara : 

 also Cardamine amara, Nasturtium sylvestre, near Preston. Ery- 

 simum cheiranthoides and Sinapis nigra grow in cornfields here 

 as everywhere else; although some writer in the ' Phytologist ' 

 says it, S. nigra, is not a field plant but a waysider. At all 

 events, whatever may be its habitat in Middlesex, here it grows 

 in cornfields, and no mistake. Plants are probably as capricious 

 * in their localities as some people are in their dispositions ; allow- 

 ance will be made by those who have a moderate share of the 

 milk of human kindness in their composition ; or, what is better, 

 a trace of charity, which is slow to think ill either of men or of 

 plants. The rare Umbellifers muster strong, as we may say in 

 these days of volunteering ; Caucalis latifolia, Myrrhis odorata, 

 Bupleurum rotundifolium, Smyrnimn Olusatrum, (Enanthe pcuce- 

 danifolia, Apium graveolens, Pimpinella magna, Eryngium mari- 

 timum, Sison Aniomum, Conium maculatum, and several humbler, 

 commoner species appear in these lists. One of them, Caucalis, 

 is probably a straggler, and it will be a question with some cri- 

 tical botanists whether (Enanthe peucedanifolia be genuine, or 

 whether it be not the commoner (E. Lachenalii. Those who are 



N. S. VOL. V. 3 o 



