RURAL NOTES.— PARISH OP KEA. 

 Bt THOMAS CEAGOB, F.R.G.S.— Member. 



There is not, perhaps, a shrub common to Britain altogether 

 more beautiful and. interesting than the Common Barberry — 

 Berheris Vulgaris, with its simple, but richly drooping racemes, 

 and bright tinted foliage, yet this plant bore in the old times, 

 as it does to day, an evil reputation. 



Yes, witchcraft has passed away from the statute-books of 

 England, and the mystic touch for King's-evil has passed from 

 living memory, yet, to the bright and cheerful Barberry dark 

 odium still clings as stubbornly as when Queen Anne ruled 

 these kingdoms, and really, when all the evidences are fairly 

 heard, it seems not without reason that the toiling husbandman, 

 labouring to perfect his crops, should hold the Barberry or 

 Piperidge bush almost an accursed thing in its mysterious, but 

 apparently intimate connection, with the blight or rust in 

 wheat. 



In the "lower end" of this parish, that lovely region of Kea 

 which skirts the river, where almost every growth attains a 

 degree of perfection unknown to the higher platitudes of inland 

 parishes (though but a few miles removed), and where almost 

 everything finds, in luxuriant shape, a manifold increase, strange 

 to say wheat is greatly liable to mildew, or rust, and here also 

 the Barberry abounds : and not only does it abound, but a 

 most remarkable concurrence of testimony goes to prove that 

 where a patch of rusted wheat is seen, there, in the neighbouring 

 hedge-row will the unlucky Barberry bush be found. 



There is a well known field on Banner hills, not a mile from 

 the river side, commanding an airy situation, whose northern 

 fence absolutely bristles with the deep-set triple spines of 

 Berheris Vulgaris, and for generations this field has borne so bad 

 a name for wheat that it has been allowed to over-run its 

 ordinary turn for that crop, time after time. 



However, once again the sower ventured forth — it was last 

 autumn — and wary of the foe, gave a wide margin of Oats 

 up the northern fore-end (oats not being subject to rust), and 



