1858.] THE CLENT HILLS. 393 



V. nigrum), are also very plentiful on all the hills, but especially 

 the black Moth Mullein. In most parts of the country this is 

 .the rarer plant of the two, but about Clent it is more plentifully 

 dispersed than the one which is more common elsewhere. These 

 plants have the same habit or mode of growth as the Foxglove 

 has, but they differ very considerably in the shape and colour of 

 the blossoms. The flower of the Foxglove is tubular and inflated, 

 not much unlike the finger of a glove, hence its name. Fox- 

 glove, it is believed, was once called Our Lady's Glove ; Our 

 Lady is a synonym of Mary, or the Blessed Yirgin, the Mother 

 of our Lord. The flowers of the Mulleins are all more or less 

 flat, or the limb is round and expanded, having five rounded 

 lobes, and a very short and narrow tube. The colours of the 

 Mulleins are either yellow or cream-colour, or sometimes with a 

 tinge of purple. The Foxglove has a red blossom, curiously 

 dappled in the inside with white. The white-flowered variety of 

 the common Foxglove is very rare in a wild or uncultivated state. 

 To the same family of plants, viz. Scrophulariacece , or the Fig- 

 wort family, belongs the Knobby-rooted Figwort {Scrophularia 

 nodosa), a plant which agrees with the Foxglove and the 

 Mulleins in their straight, upright, taper, rod-like stems, and in 

 the shape and position of their leaves; they, however, differ 

 materially in their inconspicuous green, purple-tipped flowers. 

 This plant is not so common on the hills as the former-men- 

 tioned, but it is occasionally met with on elevated places, espe- 

 cially on banks of hedges and similar situations. The showy 

 Toadflax {Lina7'ia vulgaris) also grow's abundantly on the hills, 

 where it is not always confined to hedges, but is occasionally 

 found on pastures. The stem of this plant is stout and erect, 

 like the former, but its flowers resemble those of the garden 

 flower Snapdragon^ in having a lip which closes the mouth or 

 throat of its blossom {corolla) . This form of flower is termed by 

 botanists the personate, from persona, a mask, because of its 

 fancied resemblance to this apparatus. The garden Snapdragon 

 {Antirrhinum majus) and Ivy-leaved Toadflax {Linaria Cymba- 

 laria) occur on old walls about Hagley, but they are not very 

 common. The Water Figwort grows plentifully in the vicinity 

 of water, in low moist places. There is also another small plant 

 {Linaria Elatine), of the same natural order, found here and 

 there in cornfields, but it is not so common on the hilly fields 



N. S. VOL. II. 3 E 



