1859.] woAD, 231 



certainly established, and can be constantly found in any quan- 

 tity, and especially where the presumption is in favour of their 

 being indigenous at that spot. Yet knowledge progresses at so 

 slow a pace, and the records of observation are so often slighted, 

 that the very latest botanical works in too many instances only 

 copy habitats or localities from the old Floras preceding them, 

 even in cases where better facts might be easily and advantage- 

 ously given. Thus, with regard to the Woad, Mr. Babington 

 merely states in his Manual, as to its whereabouts, " Cultivated 

 and waste land, rare;" and Hooker and Arnott, " Cultivated fields 

 about Ely, Durham, etc." This is very loose and unsatisfactory, 

 and as far as I have seen, whether in the south, west, or middle 

 of England, it never appears in " cultivated fields " at all. In 

 Mr. Irvine's recent 'Handbook of the British Plants^ a more 

 certain and satisfactory locality is given for the Isatis, of " chalk- 

 quarries near Guildford, Surrey;" and here, whether truly indi- 

 genous or not, the plant must be firmly established, for I have a 

 specimen gathered long ago at these very quarries, and my friend 

 the Rev. J. H. Thompson, who is familiar with that vicinity, 

 tells me it is always to be found there. 



More than forty years since, when a very young botanist, I 

 found the Isatis tinctoria growing in considerable quantity on the 

 bare red-marl cliff that forms the eastern, very precipitous, bank 

 of the Severn, at the Mithe, a mile north of Tewkesbury, where 

 the river divides Worcestershire from Gloucestershire ; and how- 

 ever long it might have flourished here, no botanist, as far as I 

 know, had previously recorded its existence at the spot. No 

 * Phytologist ' at that time was published, but I sent a notice to 

 Mr. Watson for his ' New Botanists' Guide,' where I believe it 

 appeared ; but no Flora has copied the locality, as perhaps it was 

 deemed not persistent at the spot, though I again verified the 

 profusion of the plant here in 1850, as mentioned in my ' Bota- 

 nical Looker-out.' 



It may not then be undeserving of remank^fthat a few days ago, 

 having mentioned the Woad as growing at the Mithe, a party of 

 the Malvern Naturalists' Club, in returning from a field-day at 

 Apperley, near Tewkesbury, stopped in the dusk of evening at 

 the Mithe Cliff, to gain specimens of the Isatis, if possible ; and 

 even in the gloom its towering golden clusters were seen studding 

 the ledges of the cliff, at some distance from the base. I left 



