THE PHYTOLOGIST. 



No. IX. 



FEBRUARY, MDCCCXLII. 



Price 6d. 



Art. XLVII. — Three Days on the Cotteswolds. 

 By Jas. Buckman, Esq. 



Having engaged to accompany my friend Mr. Edwin Lees, in a three days' Na- 

 tural-History expedition to the Cotteswolds, towards the end of September in the pre- 

 sent year [1841] we started on our journey, armed with vasculums, portfolios, books, 

 hammers and bags, and under the command of General Briggs, of Cheltenham, a 

 gentleman to whom the naturalists of this neighbourhood are much indebted for his 

 kindness in aiding their researches, by accommodating them on such occasions as the 

 present with the use of his carriage, so that they may arrive at the scene of their la- 

 bours on the rugged hill-top or heathy moor, fresh and ready for work. 



Having proceeded as far from Cheltenham as the first coach-stage on the Lon- 

 don road, we tunied to the left from Andoversford Inn, and in a short time alighted 

 from the carriage in the very heart of the Cotteswolds, the road leading directly 

 over the top of the hills to the ancient town of Stow-on-the-Wold. Of course we soon 

 diverged from the road into the fields, where we duly commented on the great abun- 

 dance of Campanula glomerata, Cnicus acaulis and Carlina vulgaris, which in this 

 neighbourhood are always stout and fair, and of goodly proportions, the latter espe- 

 cially, as it occurs from one to two feet in height, whilst on Leckhampton, a hill nearer 

 Cheltenham, it seldom attains more than four inches, and looks so withered and dead 

 as to lead an inexperienced botanist into the belief that it is some ill-grown specimen 

 of a common thistle in a state of decay ; and this peculiar appearance is not entirely 

 lost in the more luxuriant specimens, as the external scales of the involucre always 

 present the appearance of the " sear and yellow leaf " of approaching death. That 

 beautiful thistle, Cnicus eriophorus, is frequently met with in a most luxuriant condi- 

 tion on the grassy sides of these hilly roads. 



Immediately on emerging from this road to the right across the fields, by a place 

 called Slad Barn, we found some fine plants of Linaria spuria, the corollas of severa. 

 specimens of which had three or four spurs ; this is a curious circumstance, but one 

 that I had before observed in specimens growing near Cheltenham in a rich cultivated 

 soil. Some of these corollas too, instead of being lipped, were salver-shaped, with a 

 straight upright tube. I very much regret that I did not then think of ' The Phyto- 

 logist,' as all good botanists should do, or I should certainly have made a drawing of 

 this singular kind of metamorphosis, for insertion in its valuable pages ; this omission 

 I promise to rectify on some future occasion, as the extent of change cannot be shown 

 in the dried specimens. This Linaria is extremely common on our highest hills as 

 well as in the vales, and is accompanied in all its habitats by the elegant little L. Ela- 

 tine, and I suspect the one is derived from the other, as I have met with numberless 

 intermediate stages ; and if Linaria spuria and Elatine are to be considered distinct 

 species, surely the speciuicn I have adverted to ni ust claim to be considered as an ad- 



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