THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS 89 



Hastings, and is now only to be found in the Isle of 

 Wight, where it flourishes on the perpendicular face 

 of the inaccessible chalk cliffs. The exquisite little 

 Tricomena, a dwarf member of the Iris family, exists 

 only in one locality in South Devon. In former years 

 the rugged heights of Portland were clothed with the 

 handsome tree-mallow, which also grew " at Hurst 

 Castle, over against the Isle of Wight." In both 

 these localities, and indeed along the whole of the 

 southern coast, except in Devon and Cornwall, this 

 splendid plant, so dear to the ancient herbalists, will 

 now be sought for in vain. 



In the Isle of Wight, to take a small and well- 

 known botanical district, many plants formerly existed 

 which must now be omitted from the Flora Vectensis. 

 To judge from a statement in the works of de 1'Obel, the 

 sea-colewort or wild cabbage, the parent of our garden 

 species, was formerly not uncommon on the Island 

 cliffs. As late as the middle of the last century it 

 grew plentifully on the crumbled chalk at the foot of 

 the Culvers. It had disappeared from that locality 

 by the year 1870, and is now lost to the Island. 

 About the year 1835 John Stuart Mill, who found his 

 only recreation in botany, discovered in Sandown Bay 

 a single specimen of the rare purple sponge. This 

 specimen is still carefully preserved, but the plant has 

 not been met with in the Island since. On the pebbly 

 beach of the same bay the seaside everlasting pea 

 formerly existed ; this, too, is gone, and also the very 

 rare Diotis maritimci, or seaside cotton-weed. In the 

 rough, broken ground of the Undercliff, especially in 

 the neighbourhood of the little church of St. Lawrence, 

 once celebrated as the smallest church in England, 

 and about the ivy-clad ruins of Wolverton, that hand- 



