1858.J BOTANICAL NOTES, NOTICES, AND QUERIES. 413 



Oil the hills, in Berkshire, above Streatley?" In answering this question, 

 I have the pleasure to refer your correspondent to an excellent little work 

 written by my friend S. E.. Pattison, Esq. ,]?.G.S., called 'The Earth and 

 the Word,' in which he gives a list of the change of strata at most of 

 the stations on the Great Western Railway between Paddington and St. 

 Austell : — Eeading, plastic sands ; Pangbourne, Upper Chalk ; Goring, 

 Middle Chalk; Wallingford Road, Lower Chalk, He also states that 

 every successive formation, in our downward journey towards the Land's 

 End, crops out from beneath the preceding one. This has no connection 

 with the absolute height of the hills, for we shall find the Granite and 

 Slate much more mountainous than the uppermost Gravels at Hampstead. 

 I need not say how important it is for botanists to be introduced to the 

 sister-science of Geology, so that they may be enabled, when collecting 

 plants, to designate the soil or strata on which they are found. 



S. Beisly. 



FiFESHiRE Plants. 



(From a Correspondent.) 



Mropa Belladonna is known to me to grow only in two or three places 

 in Eife ; whether or not it is truly a Scotch plant is, I think, doubtful. 

 More frequently than otherwise its stations are found to be not very far 

 from a palace or monastery. The monks may have used it medicinally 

 or otherwise. This however is not conclusive, for the berries, having a 

 tempting appearance and no unpleasant taste, have been so often fatal, es- 

 pecially to children, that there is an antipathy against the plant sufficient 

 to account for its extirpation, if it had been ever so abundant. It is 

 mentioned in Sibbald's ' History of Eife ' as one of the plants of the 

 country in Charles II. 's reign, " growing in sundry parts of the shire." 

 He gives a separate list for the coast and islands of the Eorth (where the 

 plant now grows), in which it is not mentioned. It therefore must have 

 t/ie/i grown in parts of the county where I have not marked it as seen, 

 but where it perhaps might still be found. 



' I give you here Sibbald's list, as regards the Solanace/s, in his own 

 words : — 



" Solanum bacciferum, 1, sive officinarum." [/S. niffrum.'] 



" Solanum bacciferum, 4, sive melanocerasus, C. B." l_Atr. Belladonna.'} 



" Solanum bacciferum, 12, id est scandens sive Dulcamara, C. B." [S. Dulca/mara.'] 



The last of these is br/ no means uncoimnon in Eife, though said gene- 

 rally to be rare in Scotland, — following Hooker, I suppose, but he had not 

 been long in Scotland when the ' Flora Scotica ' was compiled ; I know only 

 one station for S. nigrum, but several for Hyoscyamus, which Sibbald may 

 have thought too common to include in his not very long list (?). The 

 idea that Belladonna was the plant mentioned by Buchanan is not new : 

 I have before seen it asserted without any doubt. The root of this plant 

 is also somewhere said to be alluded to by Shakespeare in ' Macbeth,' where 

 Banquo says, when the witches vanish from his sight, 

 " (Or) Have we eaten of the insane BOOT 

 That takes the reason prisoner ?" 



(See ' Macbeth,' act i. scene 3.) ' . H. F. B. 



