1862.] SHAMROCK. 211 



We have not yet ascertained the year of Parkinson's death ; 

 all certainly known about this important event is that he was 

 alive in 1640, when his great work appeared, and was then in his 

 seventy-third year ; and also that he had departed prior to 1656, 

 when a second edition of the Paradisus was published. 



Notices of William How and Christopher Merrett are post- 

 poned ; they will be inserted in some subsequent number. 



SHAMIIOCK (Trifolium iiepens). 

 (To the Editor of the ' Phytologist.') 



Sir,— In ' Phytologist,' Vol. VI., n. s., p. 30, W. J. H. Fer- 

 guson boldly tells your readers that they are all in the " wroug 

 boat" who say or write that Erin's green, immortal Shamrock is 

 Trlformm rejjens, the common white Clover, the commonest of 

 all our Trefoils in England, and which a writer in the ' Phy tolo- 

 gist^ has recently informed us was not introduced into Ireland at 

 so early a period as St. Patrick's arrival in the Isle of Saints. 

 Wliat will Professor Babington say to this ? Will he admit its 

 true nativity in England, and brand it as an alien in the sister 

 island? Nous verrons : i.e. time will tell us. We must wait with 

 as much patience as we can muster, while the oracle is silent. 



Mr. Ferguson starts no new game ; he only tells us what we 

 have heard before, viz. that the genuine Shamrock is not the 

 White Clover, as all Irish botanists say, — and Ireland's greatest 

 poet also clinches the assertion, — but the Wood Sorrel, an idea 

 first promulgated by Mr. Bicheno,"^ of the Linnsean Society, 

 and published in the ' Journal of the Royal Institution.' 



* This eminent authority relies on the subjoined extract from Spenser's 'View of 

 the State of Ireland.' It is quoted entu-e, and our readers are requested to form 

 their own opinions on its relevancy. Mr. Bicheno also quotes Fyuis Moiysou and 

 the poetical lines from the ' Irish Hudibras.' 



" Spenser, in his ' View of the State of Ireland,' proves that one of the Shamrocks 

 was an edible plant. His description of the half-famished natives and their hunt- 

 ing after this herb is related in the following extract : — " Out of every corner of the 

 woods and glynnes, they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could 

 not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death ; they spoke Uke ghosts crying 

 out of theu' graves ; they did cat the dead carious, happy where they could find them, 

 yea, and one another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcases they spared not to 

 scrape out of their graves and if they found a plot of Watercresses or Shamrocks 

 there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able to continue loug there, 



