110 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



sliort claw. Capsule slii^litly exceeding tlie sepals. Seeds reni- 

 form, rugose with raised dots. 



Var. a, genuhia. 



Leaves rather acute, apiculate ; those of the base of the stem 

 and barren shoots and root not adpressed. 



Var. ^, Gerardi. 



Leaves bluntish, not apiculate ; those of the base of the stem 

 and barren shoots adpressed. 



On rocks and dry grassy banks. Very local. In Cornwall, 

 Somerset, Wales, Derbyshire, and most of the counties in the 

 North of England. In Scotland, it is abundant on Arthur's Seat, 

 near Edinburgh, and North of which it becomes extremely rare, 

 though it has been found in the counties of Perth and Aberdeen. 

 The Cornwall and Galway plants belong to var. ^. 



England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Spring and Summer. 



Rootstock -woody, producing large tufts of barren shoots and 

 leafy bases of the flowering stems, the upper part of the latter 

 rising from 1 to 5 inches above the cushion of leaves. Leaves 

 about 5- inch long, slender, and often curved. Elowers f inch 

 across, pure white, very handsome. Pedicels slender. Plant bright 

 green, with the stem and pedicels more or less clothed with gland- 

 tipped hairs, or more rarely (as in the plant from Arran, Galway), 

 quite glabrous. 



Professor Babington refers the plant from Cornwall to A. Ger- 

 ardi (Reich.), describing the leaves as rather blunt, and not at all 

 apiculate. In the only Cornwall specimen which I have seen tliey 

 are precisely the same as those of the Arran specimens before 

 mentioned ; so that these must also be referred to A. Gerardi, 

 though whether it be the true A. Gerardi of the Continent, seems 

 not quite certain, as the various descriptions of it given in different 

 Floras do not appear to apply to the same form. 



Vernal Sandwort. 



French, Alsine Printaniere. German, Friihlings-Alsine. 



It has been remarked by a naturalist-^with how much truth we do not know- 

 that this plant has the peculiar power of resisting the deleterious eflects of metallic 

 oxides which pervade the refuse heaps of mines ; and in such situations, where vegetable 

 life is seldom seen, this little plant flourishes. 



