ADDITIONS TO OUR NATIVE FLORA 101 



solemn feasts and sacrifices to go all naked." This 

 famous plant, doubtless the relic of ancient cultivation, 

 is still to be found in several parts of England, as in 

 the chalk quarries near Guildford, where now, as in 

 1841 when John Stuart Mill noticed it, it grows in 

 " prodigious luxuriance." Other plants doubtless owe 

 their existence to the old monastic herb-gardens, 

 among which may be mentioned the birthwort, the 

 masterwort, the wild hyssop, and perhaps the wild 

 mercury, formerly used as a pot-herb. The milk or 

 Virgin Mary thistle, the leaves of which are beautifully 

 veined with white, is supposed to have been brought 

 from the East by the Crusaders. The soapwort, 

 though known to Gerarde, who says "it groweth 

 wilde of itselfe neere to rivers and running brooks in 

 sunny places," yet seems to have been an escape from 

 cultivation in gardens where, says our herbalist, "it 

 is planted for the flouer sake, to the decking up of 

 houses, for the which purpose it chiefly serveth." 

 The larkspur again has no claim to be considered a 

 native plant, although in Ray's time "it was to be 

 found in great plenty amongst the corn in Swafham 

 Field in Cambridgeshire/' 



Many of our mural plants, though now completely 

 naturalised on old walls and ruins throughout the 

 country, cannot be regarded as indeed their artificial 

 position would lead us to suspect as indigenous 

 members of our British flora. The wallflower, though 

 known to Gerarde and Ray, and perhaps dating back 

 to the period of Roman occupation, is admitted by all 

 botanists to be an alien species. So with the splendid 

 red valerian, so conspicuous on the grey walls of 

 Winchester Cathedral, of Portchester Castle, and other 

 historic buildings ; and the rare Dianthus plumarius, 



