280 THiRSK NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. [^September, 



wortj or creeping Loosestrife; and here and there also are Circcea 

 lutetiana, the Enchantress's Nightshade, Sanicula europaa (the 

 wood Sanicle), and other interesting species. 



I must not forget to mention that by the side of the canal 

 near Trench was found the rare and beautiful Flowering Rush 

 {Butomus umbellatus) , with its large umbels of purple blossoms 

 towering above the beds of modest green Juncus which line the 

 side, and that a forest of Conium maculatum in perfect blossom 

 was also met with. 



Only a very few specimens of ornithological and entomological 

 interest were met with on this occasion. 



At the recent meetings of the Association have been given 

 important ornithological papers, — one on the Uuff, another on 

 the Night- jar, and one also on that interesting little member of 

 the family, the Redstart. 



THIRSK NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 

 Botanical Exchange Club. 



The monthly meeting of the Thirsk Natural History Society 

 was held on the evening of Wednesday, the 10th of August. Mr. 

 J. G. Baker communicated the following notices. 



" Sedum albescens, Haworth. This is the Sedum glaucum oi 

 ' English Botany,^ but the name was preoccupied by Waldstein 

 and Kitaibel. Last autumn Mr. John Lloyd courteously sent 

 me a living tuft of it from the rocks at Babbicombe Bay, in 

 Devonshire, and this year I have grown it side by side with S. 

 reflexum and S. elegans {rupest7^e,Augl.) . In the size of all its parts, 

 — leaves, stems, and flowers, — albescens is only half the size of 

 reflexum, and thus corresponds pretty much in this respect with 

 the other species. In habit of growth and in rapidity of increase 

 by means of creeping shoots all the three coincide. S. albescens 

 has the acute, subcylindrical leaves of reflexum, smaller in size 

 and more glaucous in hue, and upon the barren shoots they reach 

 low down upon the shoot and are scattered irregularly, the upper 

 loosely adpressed, the lower spreading from the stem at an acute 

 or even a right angle, thus ofifering a decided contrast to elegans, 

 in which the leaves are flattened and form at the flowering- time 



