104 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



that flows down the picturesque valley of the Lyth 

 at Selborne, a spot specially sacred to the memory of 

 Gilbert White, this plant has now completely estab- 

 lished itself in the most luxuriant abundance. In the 

 same district the Canadian fleabane or Michaelmas 

 daisy may now and again be met with on the grassy 

 wastes that border the country lanes; while in the 

 neighbourhood of London it is reported as a fairly 

 common plant. 



The career of the Canadian pond-weed (Anacharis 

 Alsinastrum, Bab.), is interesting because of the extra- 

 ordinary rapidity with which it spread itself through- 

 out the country. It seems to have been first noticed 

 in Great Britain in County Down about the year 

 1836; in 1842 it was reported from Berwick-on- 

 Tweed; in 1847 it was discovered by a Miss Kirby 

 in the Foxton Locks, near Market Harborough, in 

 Leicestershire; in the same year it was found by 

 Mr. Borrer in the pond at Legh Park, near Havant, 

 in Hampshire; two years later it was reported as 

 growing abundantly in the river Trent at Burton-on- 

 Trent, and afterwards at Cambridge ; and since then 

 it has rapidly spread through ponds, and canals, and 

 sluggish streams over the whole of Great Britain. Its 

 progress is the more remarkable from the fact that 

 it seldom or never seeds in this country (the male 

 flower having been found in the neighbourhood of 

 Edinburgh only), and seems to propagate itself almost 

 entirely by means of its floating branches. Another 

 American plant which has found its way to England, 

 and has become extraordinarily abundant in one 

 locality, is the many-spiked cordgrass, or Spartina 

 alterniflora. This stout and useful grass, which loves 

 the mud-flats and salt creeks of tidal rivers, is common 



