BOTANIZING IN NORTH MIMS. 407 
peris matronalis on the railway-bank, near Barnet station, one 
of our parvenus, according to modern botanists; yet its claims 
to rank among British plants are unchallenged by Ray and 
Hudson. Probably it is better established in the north than in 
the south of England. It has been collected in a copse in the 
parish of Laxton, near Colchester, but it is not improbable that 
it may have been derived from cultivation: “An escape from 
cultivation” is the established term. It is a favourite among 
the humble lovers of flowers, and consequently has got a place 
in the cottage-garden, and some varieties of the plant are very 
handsome and fragrant. It used to be, and probably still is, a 
fashionable flower about Southgate, Middlesex, where it appears 
to have been cultivated with as much zeal and pains as a Lan- 
cashireman bestows on his Polyanthuses and Pinks; and with 
similar success enormously large trusses of pure white flowers 
used to be grown, rivallmg im size the finest specimens of 
Brompton Stocks ever produced. In Sir J. E. Smith’s excel- 
lent ‘English Flora’ the general localities are in hilly pastures, 
especially near rivulets, but rare; the special are “on the banks 
of the rivulets about Dalehead, Cumberland, and Grassmere, 
Westmoreland (Mr. Nicholson), Diéllentus. About Falmouth, 
Withering ; near Cheltenham, on Cotswold-ridge, General Hard- 
wicke, from which neighbourhood it was sent to Mr. Sowerby: 
see ‘English Botany.’ Near the old Castle of Airly, Angus- 
shire, Mr. J. Mackay and Mr. G. Don.” 
In reference to this subject, Withering, in vol. 11. and p. 587 
of his famous work, says, “ Specimens which I collected in Corn- 
wall agree perfectly well with the figure of Jacquin and the Flora 
Danica.” The difficulty then (1796). was the question about the 
distinctness of the two supposed Linnean forms (objects), H. 
matronalis and H. inodora. This was happily settled by Brown, 
to the general contentment of all British botanists. Among 
these the difficulty is not whether there be two species, but 
whether there be one British Hesperis at all? “Sic tempora 
mutantur nosque mutamur in illis.” Potentilla argentea and 
Galium cruciatum, a rare plant in Hertfordshire, were gathered 
in a lane between Potter’s Bar station and the woods whither 
we were tending. In a portion of the wood flanking an old 
chalk-pit Campanula latifolia grows very fine and plentiful; it 
was not of course in flower. In wet ruts in the cart-track lead- 
ing to the keeper’s house, which is on the summit of the ridge, 
