1858] The "Fine Indigenous Hellebore." 97 



bushy banks which run across the cornfield above the 

 road, as well as another road joining the new and old 

 roads, but here, again, no hellebore. So, back to the 

 path leading up to the church ; but I remembered to have 

 seen a leaf last year hanging from the bank out of a 

 copse by the road just below the church. Hither I made my 

 way, and soon found many plants of hellebore (though 

 none flowered) ; but with them such overpowering evidence 

 of introduction that it makes one doubt the whole set of 

 Isle of Wight localities. Here grows a foreign Hype- 

 ricum, many Syringas, and other cultivated trees, and a 

 curious umbelliferous pot-herb. There are steps too, and 

 walks now overgrown, evidently an old pleasure-ground, 

 attached perhaps to the old Priory of Woolverton. The 

 new road is cut right through the head-quarters of the 

 hellebore, and the lower part must have been included in 

 the same pleasure-ground. Alas for the fine * indigenous* 

 hellebore ! On my return I saw wallflowers growing half 

 wild, at top of my friend Fisher's garden, on the chalk. 



" May 28. The return walk home. On the ascent of 

 the valley behind St. Boniface the butterflies Cinxia and 

 Agestis* were flying about. Orchis ustulata, a few plants 

 only, occurred, and among the crumbled flint Vicia angus- 

 tifolia. On reaching the summit a true heath vegetation 

 is found ; most species are characteristic of a sandy sub- 

 soil. . . . The smooth variety of the Cerastium (triviale) was 

 growing in the wheel tracks and by the edge of the road 

 mixed, as on Pan Common, with the ordinary form. I did 

 not find any C. tetrandrum until reaching the place where 

 gravel has been dug above Luccombe. Here too it was 

 my great pleasure to detect the Dartford Warbler, flirting 

 his great long tail on the spray of a furze-bush ; and the 

 two birds kept for a long time calling to each other * chay 

 cha cha,' something like a subdued version of the White- 

 throat's call. They were quite tame, and continued creep- 

 ing among the furze more like mice than birds for some 

 time, only ceasing when I beat the bush, but they then 



* The " Glanville Fritillary " and "Brown Argus" the former one of the 

 rarest and most local of British butterflies. 



H 



