37 



served a few plants of Lathyius Nissolia. Hence cutting across, that 

 is, avoiding the windings of the park, and going over a rising part of 

 the ground, we reached the field where Althaea hirsuta is this year in 

 gi'eat profusion. This field extends quite up to the park, and is per- 

 haps about half an hour's easy walk from Cobham. Salvia pratensis 

 is found in the same spot, all along the bank on the extremity of the 

 field, and close to the park. The ground rises as one walks towards 

 Rochester, and that city is seen after passing along the head of this 

 field and part of the next. 



After collecting some specimens of Althaea hirsuta and Salvia pra- 

 tensis, the latter plant being at that time most luxuriant and beautiful, 

 we crossed the fields by a path which leads to the road between Cux- 

 ton and Hailing, on the Medway. On the steep chalky downs or pas- 

 tures about midway between these two villages, we found numerous and 

 fine plants of columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris), the flowers of which were 

 of a deep and exquisite blue ; also specimens of Orchis fuse a and va- 

 rious other Orchidaceous plants. My fiiend Mr. Pampliu had the 

 pleasure of finding a curious variety of Ophrys niuscifera. Between 

 an ancient religious house and Cuxton, going towards the latter place 

 on the right hand, and nearer to the said house than to the village of 

 Cuxton, we gathered Anchusa sempervirens under the hedge ; a plant 

 very rarely found, but which has been occasionally noticed as belong- 

 ing to this spot, since the times of the earliest botanists. Near the 

 road between Gad's Hill and Gravesend, grow Lathyrus latifolius or 

 sylvestris and Fumaria parviflora. 



These places, together with the marshes about the Medway, will 

 well repay the labour of investigation ; especially to such as have a 

 taste for the cultivation of local Botany. 



[In a subsequent communication dated July 8tli, Mr. Irvine kindly favours us with 

 some remarks on the Tragopogon mentioned at p. 36, which Mr. Pamplin has observ- 

 ed in the same spot at Cobham for several years. Mr. Irvine also added from Koch's 

 ' Flora Germanica,' a description of Tragopogon orientalis, Linn., with which species 

 the Cobham plant agrees in the peduncles being cylindrical, and only slightly swollen 

 immediately under the flowers, in the number of leaflets (8) of the involucre, and in 

 the florets being much longer than the involucre. These, however, are almost the only 

 particulars in which the Cobham plant agrees with Trag. orientalis ; and having care- 

 fully examined fine and perfect specimens with which Mr. Pamplin has obligingly 

 furnished us, we find them to agree so exactly with the description of Trag. pratensis 

 in '■ English Flora,' iii. 388, even to the curling of the tips of the long and gradually 

 tapering leaves, that we have little doubt of the Cobham plant being that species in a 

 state of great luxuriance, and with the florets longer than usual, which Sir J. E. Smith 

 says is sometimes the case. Our opinion is strengthened by finding that in the Cob- 



