1862.] KENTISH BOTANY. 131 



through the meadows, a tract more conducive to botanical pur- 

 poses. 



Appledore is said to be a corruption of Apple-tree, and it is 

 not a very remote or unreasonable etymology, though Apple- 

 trees are now as rare in Rorauey Marsh as Dr. Johnson fancied 

 trees were in Scotland.^ Like many other places in Kent, it 

 was better known and more celebrated when it was washed on 

 two sides by the sea, wliich is now several miles distant from the 

 village. In 793 it was plundered by the Danes, the scourge of 

 this part of England in the Anglo-Saxon period. In the reigns of 

 Edward III. and Richard II., the sea reached Appledore, as we 

 learn from Dudgale^s great work on the drainage of the Fens, 

 etc., of England. (See Dugdale, p. 43, and hifra.) Its condition in 

 the sixteenth century is described by our great antiquary Leland 

 in the following terms : — ^^" Appledor of sum is countid a membre 

 of Rumeney, is a market town and hath a goodly chirche in 

 Kent and our Ladye of Ebery in Oxeneye toward a X myle by 

 cumpace and cumpaced about with salt water, except where it is 

 divided by fresh water from the Continent, part in Kent and 

 part in Sussex." — Leland, vii. Ii2. 



: We looked about Appledore during an hour or more, but 

 could see no traces of the sea. It is now surrounded by rich 

 meadow-lands, from which the natives were carrying the produce, 

 which, for so fertile a locality, was not very abundant last season. 

 There are however some trees at Appledore, — not fruit-trees, 

 only Willows, Poplars, and other v.ater-loviug species. f 



On our way to and froiy Appledore we observed abundance 

 of Marsh-mallow, Alth(Ba officinalis. This plant at this season, 

 August 13th, was in great luxuriance and beauty, and it was seen 

 in all our future peregrinations ; we never lost sight of it for ten 

 minutes, except when we were botanizing on the beach near the 

 sea, and these amounted to some forty or fifty miles ; but there 

 was scarcely so much as a hundred yards of our jouj-ney where 



* While the Doctor was travelling in Scotland, he lo?;t a huge stick of his in the 

 treeless island of Mull. Boswell told him he would recover it ; but the Doctor 

 shook his head. "No! no!" said he, "let anybody in Mull get ijossession of it, 

 and it will never be restored. Consider, Sir, the value of svich a piece of timber 

 here." 



t Trees were once plentiful in the Marsh, and near Appledore, as any one may 

 see, for many huge logs dug up during the formation of the railway are lying on 

 the meadows alo)ig the line. These black shapeless masses of half-decayed timber 

 appear to be oak. 



