92 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



orchis. In the early summer of 1898 the latter 

 appeared in extraordinary abundance on a small patch 

 of down-land in the writer's parish. There were 

 literally hundreds of plants. Not content with occupy- 

 ing the down, they invaded the debris of an adjoining 

 chalk-pit, and sprang up in every possible situation. 

 The following season it required a good deal of 

 searching to find so much as a single specimen. 



But if in some few instances the disappearance of 

 interesting plants can be thus naturally accounted for, 

 in the great majority of cases it is due to the inroads 

 of civilisation, with its building operations and scientific 

 methods of agriculture. It is very curious to come 

 across, in old books, the names of plants and wild 

 flowers which in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 

 turies were to be seen growing in London and its 

 neighbourhood. There are many such notices to be 

 found scattered up and down the writings of Gerarde 

 and Ray, and others of the early botanists. For 

 instance, the little wall-rue fern was to be found on 

 " an old stone conduit between Islington and Jack 

 Straw's Castle," and the royal Osmunda flourished 

 on Hampstead Heath, together with the lily-of-the- 

 valley. The mistletoe might be seen growing "on 

 some trees at Clarendon House, St. James's." In 

 Lambeth Marsh the very rare " frogge-bit " grew, 

 "where any that is disposed may see it," and. the 

 arrow-head in "the Tower ditch," and also "by 

 Lambeth Bridge over against the Archbishop of 

 Canterbury's Palace." In the "moat that encom- 

 passes the seat of the Right Reverend the Bishop of 

 London at Fulham " might be seen the sweet-smelling 

 flag, and the yellow water-lily, and the scarce Carda- 

 mine. impatiens. The sweet - scented camomile was 



