1858.] BOTANICAL SKETCHES. 339 



which abounds in the lower portion of the Thames Valley. In 

 the ditches on both sides of the road grew Butomus umbellatus, 

 etc. From Caversham Bridge there was a delightful view of the 

 aquatic vegetation of old Father Thames. The magnificent white 

 Water-lily and her somewhat less fair sister, the yellow beauty, 

 covered large portions of the placid, almost motionless, streams, 

 with their broad, shining, shield-like leaves ; while the flowers, 

 open in the bright and warm sunshine, reposed in queenly state 

 on the ample green leaves, spread like an emerald carpet over the 

 deep waters. Sagittaria sagittifolia (Arrow-head) was there too, 

 with leaves whose blade, from the basal lobes to the apex, was 

 not much, if any, short of twelve inches long, on footstalks we 

 do not know how many fathoms long, for they Avere mostly iinder 

 water. The flowers appeared to us nearly as grand as the aquatic 

 Liliaceous plants that ornament the miniature lakes in the Crystal 

 Palace at Sydenham. CEnanthe Phellandrium (Water Dropwort) 

 was in full flower, and presented many a bright white patch in 

 the midst of the luxuriant green herbage which fringed the banks 

 and islets of this noble river. The Scirpus lacustris (BuUrush) 

 bent gracefully from the surface, and formed a natural curve, 

 from which Hogarth's celebrated line of beauty might have been 

 derived. 



There was here a good opportunity of studying the distinctive 

 characters of the two Water-lilies, derivable from the leaves. Of 

 course we had no need to apply this, because both plants were 

 in flower ; but it has been somewhere or other recorded of a great 

 botanist, who, in writing to a brother sage, informed the latter that 

 he had observed the Water-lily in a certain locality, but he did 

 not know which, because the plants w^ere not then in flower. The 

 leaf of the Nuphar, the yellow sort, is more elongated than that 

 of the white, and it is always more or less pointed. The leaf of 

 the queen of British aquatics — is it needful *to write the white 

 Water-lily ? — is rounded in its outline, and not pointed. The di- 

 vergence of the lobes is not a very reliable characteristic — pace 

 the writer in the ' Athenaeum,' who says that reliahle is not use- 

 able in an active sense. In the churchyard of Caversham, Ver- 

 bascum nigrum was not scarce. In the time of Violets^ the V. 

 odorata'\% plentiful. We were here on the 13th of July, in the 



iZo^a, but Mr. Syme calls it, in the ' Phytologist,' vol. iv. p. 859, B. Napus. Dis- 

 crepant doctor es. 



