COEEESPONDING SOCIETIES. 47 



taken, and if so, whethei- they bad proved to be of any value, Mr. Jeffs 

 stated that no photographs of underground sections had yet been received. 



Section D. 



Disappearance of Native Plants. — Professor Hillhouse distributed 

 among the Delegates copies of the third report of the Committee on 

 this subject. He stated that the report had this year been confined to 

 the North of England, the Isle of Man, and to a few records from the 

 southern counties of Wales. The bulk of the material had been obtained 

 directly by correspondence with the loCal Natural History Societies. 

 The Committee were especially indebted to the Yorkshire Naturalists' 

 Union, which had formed a committee of their own, the labours of this 

 committee having largely contributed to the satisfactory results which 

 had been obtained. There was still a certain amount of difficulty in 

 inducing the representatives of the societies, to which circu^lars had been 

 sent, to take steps in the matter, and he expressed a hope that the Dele- 

 gates would do their best to promote the objects of the Committee. 

 Although the Committee had not yet come to any definite decision, he 

 thought that next year's report would probably deal with the whole of 

 Wales, and possibly adjoining counties, and with the south-western 

 counties of England, and Delegates from these districts were asked to 

 bear this in mind. 



Professor Hillhouse then gave a resume of the report which had been 

 presented, stating that it contained an account of the more or less com- 

 plete disappearance from the localities mentioned therein of about seventy 

 species. In some cases the disappearance had been due to natural causes — 

 e.g., the encroachments of the sea on the Cumberland coast and elsewhere 

 had brought about the disappearance of several littoral plants ; but in 

 the great majority the handiwork of man had been recognisable. Dis- 

 appearance through human agency he classified under two heads — per- 

 sonal and impersonal. Impersonal action he illustrated by the results of 

 building works, agricultural operations, drainage, &c., which cause con- 

 stant changes in local floras. Thus the Isle of Man Brassica (B. monensis), 

 first found by the famous botanist John Ray at the Moiragh, Ramsey, in 

 1670, is in danger of extirpation there, and has already been extirpated 

 at Douglas by building operations ; and the commonest of the scarlet 

 poppies (Papaver rliceas) is greatly diminishing in the county of Cumber- 

 land through the gradual abandonment of cereal tillage. It is only 

 incidentally, however, that these impersonal changes affect plants of 

 special interest, while the personal actions of man — that is, his actions 

 directed intentionally at some particular plant — have naturally their chief 

 influence upon plants of peculiar interest or beauty. Here again, as in 

 previous reports, it is the ' collecting dealer ' whose ravages form the 

 main burden of complaint. The Ladies' Slipper orchid (Oypripedium 

 Calceolus), once not uncommon in Yorkshire, Durham, and Westmoreland, 

 has well-nigh succumbed, and the hillsides, banks, and hedgerows are 

 being rapidly stripped of their once abundant fei'ns. As an example of 

 the systematic way in which this is done. Professor Hillhouse instanced 

 the case of the Maiden Hair (Adiantum Capillus-veneris), which in the Isle 

 of Man is regularly hunted for by men with boats and ladders, and sold 

 to ' trippers ' in the Douglas market. He thought that the local Natural 



