9 6 Alexander Goodman More. [i858 



Society." This, as first designed, was the cataloguing of 

 Dr. Bromfield's Herbarium (Miss Bromfield's gift to the 

 Society's Museum at Ryde) ; but following the same plan 

 afterwards adopted with the Birds in the Dublin Museum, 

 he resolved on making it a complete List of the known 

 Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Island : a project which 

 entailed the verification wherever practicable of at least 

 one recorded locality for each of the rarer plants. 



The Undercliff was still to him much of a terra incog- 

 nita \ and towards the end of May he spent two days here 

 with Mr. A. J. Hambrough, the discoverer of Arum itali- 

 cum, who showed him that celebrated plant growing in 

 his grounds at Steephill. But above all he was desirous 

 of seeing the Helleborus fcetidus, said to grow wild near 

 Steephill, and of verifying its claim to rank among the 

 Island's indigenous plants. 



" May 27. I went to search the cornfields above Steep- 

 hill. They teem with weeds ; and soon I met with Adonis 

 (pheasant's-eyej in some quantity ; Fumaria oificinalis, 

 Euphorbia platyphylla, and over Pelham woods a few 

 pieces of Melampyrum (the purple cow-wheat), just showing 

 the purple head. At St. Laurence, Geranium rotundifo- 

 lium was in great perfection, and very pretty. The leaves 

 of Carduus marianus (milk-thistle) were conspicuous under 

 the church-yard wall. To seek the hellebore, I descended 

 by the slanting path just under the church, which leads 

 to the newly-cut road, peering through every gate and 

 hedge-bank, but to no purpose. From this point I followed 

 the new road until Woolverton Farm, which I reached 

 by another slanting lane. I looked into a field or two 

 here, but again unsuccessfully. Chenopodium bonus- 

 Henricus grows here. 



Returning some little way, I explored carefully the 



Valerianacese, on which so much stress is usually laid, has not greatly raised their 

 number above the proportion found amongst the indigenous plants. Still less is 

 thought of the influence of birds in carrying seeds to any distance, or across an 

 arm of the sea ; thus, the hypothesis that the seeds of Cotoneaster vulgaris were 

 deposited on the Orme's Head by some Redwing or Fieldfare migrating from 

 Norway is dismissed as highly improbable." 



Years previously, passing the Orme's Head by rail (November 151!:, 1854), his 

 Journal mentions how he "conjectured where the Cotoneaster might grow." 



