232 . wo AD. [August, 



my younger and more enthusiastic friends to mount the perilous 

 breach, and gain the prize for themselves, and this, after rather a 

 dangerous escalade. Captain Veyton and Mr. Lingwood, of the 

 Woolhope Club, were able to accomplish, to their great satisfac- 

 tion, obtaining some splendid specimens more than four feet in 

 height. 



I should remark, that the summit of this long marl-cliff forms 

 pasture-land apparently unbroken, so that Nature alone would 

 seem to have located the Woad on the steep marl escarpment at 

 this spot. The line of cliff, however, ends abruptly southward 

 with a rounded grassy tumulus, scarped towards the river, called 

 the " Tout,'^ which is ascribed by antiquaries to ancient British 

 times, dedicated, as supposed, to the worship of the god Teu- 

 tates; so that here are traces of very old occupation, to which 

 time we may perhaps be induced to carry back the introduction 

 of the Isatis, or believe that it grew wild on the rough marl-cliff 

 even then. At any rate, the Woad is persistent at this station, 

 and has been as far as living memory goes. Such a certain loca- 

 lity might, I think, be much better recorded in British Floras 

 than the delusive statement of "cultivated fields," where it 

 would be vain to look for it. Any exploring botanist may now 

 go to the Mithe, and find plenty of the Isatis growing on the 

 cliff, and even if no craigsman, a long hooked stick would effect 

 a capture. 



I presume that where the Woad has really appeared in " culti- 

 vated fields," that the plant had itself been under culture at the 

 spot in former days, but I do not know where this takes place at 

 present at England ; and it would be well to know whether any 

 Woad is now grown in Ely or Durham; and if not, when its 

 cultivation was given up. The Isatis is certainly not much dis- 

 posed to travel about, for familiar as I am with the country in 

 the vicinity of Tewkesbury, I have never once observed a vagrant 

 plant away from its native marl-cliff, and it could not thrive 

 better or grow taller on any other soil than it does on this barren 

 ridge, which supports scarcely anything else. 



Worcester, June Ath, 1859. 



