THE PHYTOLOGIST. 



No. XXXI. 



DECEMBER, MDCCCXLIII. 



Pkice Is. 



Art. CLXXX. — Notes of a Botanical Excursion in France, in the 

 Summer of 1843. By Joseph Woods, Esq., F.L.S. 



My friend Mr. Janson and myself crossed from Brighton to Dieppe 

 on the 13th of May, 1843. On the following day we walked to Arques, 

 about four miles distant, where there are the ruins of a noble old cas- 

 tle, and a fine fragment of a church. We walked along the valley 

 and returned over the hills, without much botanical success. Mespi- 

 lus germanicaand Chaerophyllum sativum occur near houses, and are 

 perhaps neither of them truly wild. Arenaria tenuifolia, Erodium 

 moschatum (in the village of Arques), Sambucus Kbulus and Fedia 

 carinata, were the only plants that would be considered at all rare in 

 England. The latter is much more common on this side of the water 

 than olitoria, which perhaps is a little later in its time of flowering. 

 The chalk peeps out here and there on the slopes of the hills, but is 

 generally covered with a thick layer of clay and flint, or with some 

 of the beds of the plastic clay.* 



In the ' Flore do la Normandie ' Pisum maritimum, Sedum dasy- 

 phyllum and Veronica verua, are said to grow at Dieppe; I saw none 

 of them. Nothing is given at Arques, but the forest, abounding in 

 beech trees, stretches a long way on the crest of the hills opposite to 

 the castle, and ought to furnish something to the botanist. I would 

 hardly recommend him, however, to spend his time at Dieppe, if he 

 meditate a more extensive excursion. 



* On returning to Dieppe at the end of August, I crossed the river at Dieppe, and 

 walked by St. Martin to the forest of Arques, returning through Arques. This length- 

 ens the walk, but gives a pleasing variety. We coast at first a salt marsh, but I saw 

 there no rarity. Cirsium oleraceum grows at St. Martin. On the chalky banks at the 

 edge of the forest, and also at Arques, I observed, very unexpectedly, Parnassia palus- 

 tris. A Gentian, which I at first took for a large-flowered variety of Gentiana Ama- 

 rella, but which I now believe is G. geniianica, grows on the chalk, G. campestris on 

 the plastic clay. Daucus hispidus of DeCandolle is common, but it is the same plant 

 which we find on the chalky coasts of Kent and Sussex. The vegetation about Dieppe 

 is very like that of the opposite coast, and has noue of the plants which give so marked 

 a difference to the Botany of the neighbourhood of Paris. 



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