[December, 1862.] 353 



DEVON PLANTS. 



Botany of Dartmoor, Roborough Down, etc. 



By T. R. Archer Briggs. 



As I liaA'e had^ during the past season, some botanizing excur- 

 sions on Dartmoor, and also on Hoborougli Down, an extensive 

 common lying between Plymouth and Tavistock, to the south- 

 west of the moor, I send a few notes respecting some of the 

 plants I have met with in these raml)les, and hope they will be 

 considered worth insertion in the ' Phytologist.' On the 9th of 

 last September I visited Clacywell or Classenwell Pool, a large 

 pond of water a few miles from Princetown, a village now well 

 known on account of its being close to Dartmoor prison, a large 

 building first erected for French prisoners of war, but now used for 

 the reception of convicts, ^vho are employed in cultivating the sur- 

 rounding moor. The pool is thought quite a curiosity, on account 

 of its being so deep as to have been long considered unfathom- 

 able, and its being said to be subject to periodical falls and rises. 

 Being a large sheet of water (305 yards in circumference at the 

 water's edge, according to a note in Carrington's ' Dartmoor '), 

 and lying high in a truly moorland situation, I had hoped to 

 find some rare plants around it : in this, however, I was disap- 

 pointed, as the vegetation about it was as little diversified and 

 uninteresting as that of the surrounding moor. On continuing 

 my walk for a mile or two in the direction of Walkhampton vil- 

 lage, I met with a promising-looking bog below Lethitor, and 

 soon found there PinguicuJa lusitanica in plenty, Hypericum 

 Elodes, Epilobium palustre, Rhynchospora alba, Eleocharis mul- 

 ticaulis, and of course Drosera rotimdifolia. As I had previously 

 collected specimens of Polypodium Pliegopter'is and Lastrca 

 Foenisecii in a lane near Nosw^orthy Bridge, not very far from 

 the grand-looking mass of rock called Sheepstor, and had found 

 a magnificent plant of the latter species, with fronds from nine 

 to ten inches long, in a hedgebank near the beautiful semi-moor- 

 land village of Meavy, my vasculum was pretty well filled. 

 Ceterach officinarum, a Pern by no means rare in this neighbour- 

 hood, grows on a wall near Meavy churchyard, and Eleogiton 

 fluitatis was seen in the river near Sheepstor Bridge. Teesdalia 

 nudicaulis was found near Rithypit, but not in such abundance 



N.S. VOL. VI. 2 z 



