CONTRIBUTIONS TO A FLORA OF PORTLAND. 101 



The difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory conclusion as to 

 the plant in question was not lessened by the fact that in 

 Portland it is intermixed with Limonium binervosum, a 

 species varying greatly according to local conditions, as is 

 well shewn in Dorset specimens (g). 



Matters remained as mentioned above for six years, until 

 in 1866 the well-known authority, the late Dr. Boswell-Syme, 

 Editor of Eng. Bot., Ed. 3, accompanied by a veteran 

 botanist, the late Mr. T. B. Flower, of Bath, went to Portland 

 to examine the plant in situ, but they missed the limited area 

 within which it grows, and found only plants which, on being 

 submitted to Professor Babington, were unhesitatingly 

 referred by him to L. binervosum : (Eng. Bot., Ed. 3, 

 Vol. VII., 165.) 



Interest in the question was revived in 1872, when the 

 Rev. H. E. Fox, a botanist then taking clerical duty in 

 Portland, distributed specimens through the Botanical 

 Exchange Club, on which Dr. Boswell-Syme reported as 

 follows: ''These specimens have the spikes curiously 

 contracted and dense, but are certainly not the continental 

 S. Dodartii " : (Bot. Exchange Club Rep., p. 33, 1872-4.) 

 Syme thus, again, left the plant undetermined, and 

 thought that the habit (dense spikes, &c.), was due to 

 some peculiarity of season ; subsequent experience proved 

 that this was not the case. Long investigations were also 

 made by the late Mr. Henry Groves, F.L.S., formerly of 

 Weymouth, but aftenvards of Florence, who had specially 

 studied Limonium in Italy and on the Mediterranean shores, 

 and by Mr. J. W. White, F.L.S., Special Lecturer on 

 Systematic Botany in the University of Bristol, but it was 

 reserved for Mr. Salmon finally to solve the difficulty. His 

 critical examination of a very large number of European 



(g) I may here mention that a distinct marsh form of Limonium 

 'binervosum, dwarf and thick set, is found in splashy places on the 

 Chesil Bank. This may be forma compacta, Corbiere (Flo. Normand, 

 480 (1894). 



