617 



has been found ; 1 have therefore to inform your readers, that 1 met 

 with it growing abundantly on the walls of Eltham church-yard, Kent, 

 and on the walls of several gardens to the east of the church, about 

 the middle of last June. After reading Mr, Babington's remarks on 

 the subject, I went again to Eltham, in order to trace out, if possible, 

 the source from whence this plant found its way to the above station. 

 A gardener, of many years' standing at Eltham, had often seen it 

 growing there, on walls, and had sometimes known it to spring up, 

 self-sown, in gardens near the old palace; but was not aware that it 

 had ever been cultivated in any gardens adjoining the church. Its 

 inconspicuous size would not render it a very great favourite for the 

 flower-border. He thought it likely that it might have been cultivat- 

 ed in a botanic garden, which long ago existed near the church ; and 

 that it might have escaped thence to the neighbouring walls. It is 

 noticed in the ' Flora Metropolitana,' as being found on old walls at 

 Eltham, on the authority of Mr. Wm. Pamplin. I accordingly wrote 

 to Mr. Pamplin about it, and give the following extract from his 

 prompt and obliging reply. " It is at least twenty years ago when I 

 first gathered the Valeriana Calcitrapa at Eltham." " It was to Mr. 

 Hewett C. Watson's Botanical Guide that I communicated the parti- 

 culars above referred to, and I suppose it was from thence copied into 

 Cooper's ' Flora Metropolitana.' In my communication to Mr. Wat- 

 son's Guide, I ventured to suggest that this plant (so admirably adapt- 

 ed, with its feathery wings, for dispersion) might have escaped from 

 Sherard's botanical garden at Eltham, originally, which I still think 

 was most likely the fact." At any rate, whether indigenous or not, 

 or whether likely or not to become extensively disseminated, it is a 

 pretty and interesting httle plant, and worthy of a place in the herba- 

 ria of our metropolitan botanists ; who will, I have no doubt, if they 

 extend their excursions to Eltham, find it very plentiful on many of 

 the old walls near the church. — 1V?n. Ilott; Bromley, Kent, May 10, 

 1843. 



315. On the habitats of Equiseium Jluviatile. We have now be- 

 fore us two accounts of the habitats of Equisetum fluviatile ; and as 

 the two are so much at variance, and as it appears to me that the ha- 

 bits of that plant are not well understood, I hope I shall not be thought 

 presumptuous in offering a few remarks on the subject. In the first 

 place, Mr. Newman tells us that the plant " affects loose gravelly and 

 sandy places, unconnected with water," (Phytol. 533). In the second 

 place, Mr. Watson states, that so far as his observations go, when the 

 plant grows in corn-fields and other places out of water, it is always 



