132 



Now I think facts of this kind are very useful, as giving a date for 

 the introduction of a plant into a particular county or place, and 

 should be carefully attended to. It has been remarked with respect 

 to Delphinium Consolida, now so common in the corn-fields of 

 Cambridgeshire, that Ray does not mention it. Probably, then, the 

 Delphinium has been introducd there since Ray's time, though it 

 would not follow that it had not been there previously. A curious 

 fact illustrative of this has happened in Worcestershire. When 

 Bromsgrove Lickey was enclosed, now more than half a century ago, 

 a gentleman of the name of Carpenter, who then lived at Chadwick 

 Manor, and cultivated a good deal of the new enclosures, published a 

 work on the agriculture of the district. In this he holds up the Del- 

 phinium, under the name of " Stavesacre," to universal reprobation, 

 as one of the worst weeds he had to encounter in the new arable 

 fields at Chadwick ; he gives instructions for its destruction, and to 

 make certain of his enemy, lest his description should fail, he actually 

 gibbets it in a frontispiece to his volume. How long the Delphinium 

 held up its head against this war to the hoe I am unable to say, but Mr. 

 Carpenter rendered Bromsgrove Lickey no safe place for it to abide in, 

 and as of course it could not like less specious plants to take shelter 

 in the heathy spots still remaining, it is lost there in the present day. 



The most remarkable appearance of strange plants that has fallen 

 under my notice was mentioned to me by the Rev. Mr. Crump, of 

 Shipston-upon-Stour, Worcestershire. Shipston is situated upon the 

 lias, a geological formation generally considered to have been depo- 

 sited in a shallow sea, and abounding with shells. Mr. Crump stated 

 to me that a well having been sunk in this, to a depth of about twenty- 

 four feet, the next year a quantity of the Glaucium luteum appeared 

 upon the rubbish thrown out from the shaft. He was not aware that 

 any plant of the Glaucium grew anywhere in the neighbourhood, nor 

 is it at all likely. This would have been an additional vegetable link 

 to Professor Buckman's ' Ancient Straits of Malvern,' for unless the 

 seeds of the Glaucium were already deposited in the soil, it seems 

 impossible to concieve that it could have got there from the present 

 sea-shore. Of course the sea-poppy did not continue to flourish in 

 such an inland position. 



A case analogous to this met the observant eye of my amiable 

 friend the Rev, J. H. Thom])son, of St. Nicholas, Worcester, only 

 last year. In a lane in the parish of St. Peter's, about a mile from 

 Droitwich, where a mass of waste salt stuffj mixed up with other 

 rubbishy matters, had been deposited, he noticed an enormous quau- 



