340 



we are happy to think that this eminent botanist has been among the 

 foremost, if not the first, to shake off the trammels of custom, and 

 pursue the opposite course of investigation and discovery, instead of 

 construction. 



In these days of rapid progress, it does not answer, in botany or 

 anything else, for a man to take up a scientific subject by fits and 

 starts, and only at long intervals ; or he may chance, some fine 

 morning, to find himself in the unenviable position of poor Rip Van 

 Winkle, who, on awaking from his memorable twenty years' slumber 

 in the Kaatskill mountains, found, to his utter confusion, that those 

 years had been a period of revolution — that the portrait of Washing- 

 ton had replaced that of George 111. on the sign of the village ale- 

 house, that his once trusty arms were rusted and useless, and that he 

 himself was the solitary admirer and all but the sole remuaut of 

 " things that were." 



Botanical Excursion to the Great and Little Dowards, on the Wye, 

 Herefordshire. By Abraham T. Willmott, Esq. 



During a botanical ramble last month with Mr. Henry Edwards, 

 of this town, through a highly-interesting locality, we discovered 

 Carex clandestina growing on the edge of the projecting cliffs of 

 mountain limestone of which the eastern sides of the Great and Little 

 Dowards are composed : we had been led to the spot principally for 

 Spiraea Filipendula, which I had observed there last year. As this 

 spot is in the direct route of the Wye tour, so much frequented 

 during the summer months by naturalists and pleasure parties, some 

 account of its botanical and other characters may induce some who 

 now rapidly skim the surface of the beautiful river at their feet, to 

 spend some time in enjoying the magnificent scenery, &c., of the 

 summits of those interesting hills, the scenery of which is of the 

 wildest and most romantic description ; huge fragments stand out 

 from the parent cliff, looking often like the remnants of some mighty 

 fortress or the keep and towers of an ancient castle ; at your feet 

 fiows the peaceful Wye, either buried in woods or meandering through 

 meadows spangled with fleecy flocks : but my object is not so much 

 to repeat the praises so often sung or said of the beauties of the Wye 

 as to direct the naturalist to its treasures. One of the prevailing cha- 

 racters of the mountain limestone is to be full of fissures and caverns, 

 and here it is exhibited to a great extent, indeed at some little dis- 



