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gathered spechnens : this was done, and I hope they reached you in 

 safety. They are from the locality (Wolf-hill) in which the plant was 

 first found in Ireland, by Mr. Thomas Drummond, for in this country, 

 as well as in Scotland, he was the first botanist to notice it. This he 

 did when spending a day with me in botanizing the Belfast mountains, 

 at the time that he was curator of our botanic garden. For the bet- 

 ter understanding of this interesting and little known species, I would 

 suggest, if such be not already your intention, that another figure be 

 given in ' The Phytologist.' The figures already published are very 

 good, but the greater number of readers will, I apprehend, judging 

 from them only, carry away the impression that the E. umbrosum is a 

 sparingly branched species compared with E. sylvaticum, represented 

 in a preceding page of ' The Phytologist, whereas, on the contrary, 

 its foliage is still more dense and drooping. True, in your descrip- 

 tion of the barren stem, something like this is stated, but your figure, 

 though admirably representing the plant when it begins to shoot in 

 spring, gives no idea of it in its matured state. On the steep banks 

 of a mountain-stream, about a mile southward of the similar locality 

 at Wolf-hill, I this summer remarked a few plants of E. umbrosum. 

 In both places the plant grows almost exclusively on the side of the 

 glen facing the north. The first English name applied to this spe- 

 cies — the blunt-topped — is expressive, as distinguishing it from the 

 comparatively spiral E. sylvaticum, the only British Equisetum to 

 which it seems to me to bear even a general resemblance. — Wm, 

 Thompson; Donegal Square, Belfast, September 10, 1843. 



379. Note on Osmunda regalis, near Swansea, Glamorganshire. 

 I may just adduce, as illustrating the changes caused by cultivation, 

 and showing that even within the bounds of a garden, plants may yet 

 continue wild in their prison till they are semi-domesticated, and that 

 therefore the vicinity, even if a garden, may not be always good 

 ground for doubt that a plant is indigenous there, — the fact of Os- 

 munda regalis now growing within a nursery garden at Cwm Gwynne, 

 about a mile and a half from Swansea, towards Gower. I went, in 

 company with my friend Mr. James Buckraan, of Cheltenham, to see 

 a nursery garden, some acres in extent, at Cwm Gwynne, which had 

 been enclosed from the waste about five years, and is now in a high 

 state of cultivation, with all the usual stock of a nurseryman and mar- 

 ket gardener. It was remarked to us by the lessee of the ground, that 

 there was a boggy spot in the centre of the nursery, probably the best 

 land, but which he had not yet brought under the spade. Happen- 

 ing to cross this place in our peregrinations, I thought I saw a variety 



