1861]. liubard's-bane. 325 



than I have ever seen it elsewhere. Daphne Laureola grew in a 

 hedge by the side of the road from Mellis to Burgate some years 

 since, and probably grows there still, although I did not observe 

 it on the occasion of my late visit. It had every appearance of 

 being wild in the locality referred to. 

 Preston, October 2nd, 1861. 



LIBBAED'S-BANE.— LEOPARD'S AND OTHER 

 "BANE PLANTS." 



Doronicum Pardalianches. 



Mr. Gissing, in his note in the ' Phytologist ' for March, 

 says it is customaiy with nearly all British botanists to con- 

 sider the Doronicum as alien to this country ; and he speaks of 

 one place, near Bewdley in Worcestershire, which '' is some dis- 

 tance from a house, but in conveying manure to fields or mea- 

 dows, seeds of garden plants may be taken to very unlikely 

 places for garden plants to grow." In this habitat an escape 

 from a garden (in the true sense) it certainly is not; and he 

 then refers to a passage in Ben Jonson's 'Masque of Queens,' 1609, 

 and quotes some lines in which Libbard's-bane is noticed with 

 other wild plants, and hence infers that Libbard' s-bane may be 

 properly termed a wild plant. 



1 see nothing unreasonable in this inference, but am inclined 

 to agree with Mr. Gissing ; and I would ask why, instead of its 

 having been cast out of the garden to take its place in the field, 

 it may not have been taken out of the field to be cultivated in 

 the garden. 



If so many of the seeds of our garden plants have been so 

 cast out with refuse and manure into the fields, I should like to 

 know how it is that there are so few of the garden plants grow- 

 ing in the fields. The process has been, in my opinion, vice versa ; 

 for if all plants wei-e originally what are termed wild plants (or 

 plants formed to grow naturally without particular cultivation), 

 the cultivation of them would be more likely to produce our 

 garden plants, than the garden plants cast out to produce wild 

 plants. Take for instance the Celery, the Spinach, Beet, and many 

 others, which in a wild state being found palatable, would attract 



