290 SCOTTISH BOTANY. [December, 



•whicli we noticed an immense profusion of the Symphytum tube- 

 rosum, with its downy leaves and paid- yellow flowers, the corollas 

 of many of which had fallen off. Leaving the elegant calyces 

 behind, and the Arum maculatum, called in the neighbourhood 

 Devil's snuff-box, contesting the supremacy with Docks and Net- 

 tles, but made conspicuous by its smooth spotted leaves and 

 faded spathes enclosing the green fruit ; my companion gathered, 

 in the neighbourhood of this spot,_several very fine specimens of 

 the Doronicum plantagineum in shady places among the trees. 

 This beautiful and rare Composite plant has been confounded 

 with its congener, the D. Pardalianches, even by Smith and Lin- 

 naeus; but it may be easily distinguished by its leaves being 

 more glabrous, softer, less waved and toothed, by its larger- 

 flowers and longer and narrower calyx-scales. It is a doubtful 

 native, being found only near Widdington in Essex, Strathearn 

 ■■ jff . in Perthshire, and in the Kinross woods, where it is particularly 

 '^ *■- , i abundant and very ornamental. We observed some magnificent 

 \Ak-^^ ■ specimens of the Valeriana pyrenaica by the side of a ditch near 

 the entrance to the grounds, some of which were five feet in 

 height, and thickly covered with dark-green leaves, which near 

 the root were unusually large. Near the same spot we found the 

 flaunting yellow flowers of the Meconopsis cambrica, a very rare 

 tenant of the Scottish woods, the Hieracium amplexicaule, and a 

 few isolated specimens of the beautiful Scrophularia verna, the 

 British Calceolaria ; while the Actcea spicata sent up in the 

 shadier places its spikes of foamy flowers, which were hardly vi- 

 sible amid the luxuriant grass. The old, crumbling, moss-grown 

 wall which surrounded the ancient garden was thickly draperied 

 with the pendent ivy-shaped leaves and tender little lilac flowers 

 of the Linaria Cymbalaria, a great favourite with painter and 

 poet ; and in the same situation the very rare Turritis glabra is 

 said to grow, and has actually been gathered by Professor Bal- 

 four's party some years ago, during a class excursion to the spot ; 

 but although we searched diligently for it, we were doomed to 

 disappointment, and were obliged to console ourselves somewhat 

 after the manner of the fox in the fable, with the belief that it 

 had been entirely extirpated. From the character of most of 

 those plants I have enumerated, as well as from the situation in 

 which they occur, the conclusion is almost inevitable, that they 

 are the floral remains of the ancient garden, — the descendants of 



