194 SOME BOTANICAL RECOEDS. 



Professor Babington's record for Sypericum lina/rifolium, 

 which he found on Cape Cornwall in 1839, has been so slavishly 

 copied by later-day compilers of floras that few persons seem to 

 have suspected the disappearance of the plant from that locality. 

 At its best it must have been but poorly represented " on a steep 

 slope above the sea, between two prominent masses of rock, on 

 the south side of the promintory, before reaching the lower part 

 which connects the conical headland with the rest" ; and it may 

 be averred with every assurance of safety that no one has met 

 Hypericum linarifolium on Cape Cornwall, or at any other place in 

 the county, for at least twenty-five years. Dr. Ealfs, probably 

 one of the most indefatigable workers at the Cornish flora, was 

 never able to find it, and Mr. A. Henwood Teague, F.L.S., has yet 

 to see his first living Cornish specimen. Three months ago I joined 

 Mr. A. 0. Hume, C.B., the well known authority on the game birds 

 of India, and Mr. Teague in a final systematic search for this 

 will-o'-the-wisp. Every inch of the ground marked out by 

 Professor Babington was carefully examined, together with a 

 good deal of the surrounding country, and all to no avail. In 

 matters of this kind one cannot be too cautious, but in the face of 

 such experience, to which must be added that of at least half-a- 

 dozen other botanists, the exclusion of Sypericum linarifolium 

 from our county's flora seems inevitable. There must be a good 

 deal of dubiety about a plant when never a sight of it has been 

 had for more than a quarter of a century. 



Euphorbia Peplis is another plant apparently on the high road 

 to extinction in the west. It is many years ago now since local 

 botanists talked with pride of the numbers which grew between 

 Penzance and Marazion, and on Seaton Sands, in East Cornwall. 

 He is a fortunate man indeed who can find a plant there, or 

 in any other part of the county, to-day. This past summer alone 

 I travelled over more than eight hundred miles of road and 

 beach, meadow and moorland, without obtaining a sight of this 

 species. 



While a few of our local rarities are thus yearly becoming 

 rarer, others hold their own with wonderful tenacity. More than 

 two hundred years ago when Pay came into Cornwall he found 

 that pretty grass, Fihichia umhellata, between Penzance and 

 Marazion, on what is known as the Eastern Green. With his 



