330 Lees: The Three Graces. 
and localities along the littoral and riparial county borders ; but, 
as was grandiloquently yet not untruly said by Leo Grindon 
nigh half a century ago, ‘the right-onward furrow of a generous 
utility’ must outweigh the Beture rights to existence of a 
thousand wild-flowers ! 
Interspersed in the book are some quaint economic informa- 
tions laid to the door of empiric fancy or superstition: Ragwort, 
we read (p. 182), ‘is supposed by Farmer Old-Style to be a test 
plant of good-cheese-producing pasturage.’ This is true enough, 
as the milk off old, fine mushroom turf proves the reverse in its 
tough, not readily greening ‘wangby,’ that is, poor cheese. 
The aromatic quality in the Seneczo Jacobeua, another one of the 
genus, being esteemed in the milk-fever of cattle, gives a peculiar 
ethery smack to cheese, and it is by no means so unsavoury 
as it is untidy in its weedy, chrysanthemoid appearance. Li 
several other herbs, it affects milk not only in flavour, but 
‘ es curding it sooner than fattier samples off clean lush 
pastur 
ee the Bilberry (Vaccinium Myrtillus) our author (p. 198) 
quotes Watson—I think too hastily—in his assertion that it is 
one of the species that, if allowed, would overrun Britain and 
form with Heather and Crowberry much of the phytognomic 
character of its vegetation. Here an apprehension of the 
gradual natural change coming over the surface, due to varying 
environments in different areas, has not been sufficiently taken 
into account. Bilberry is a tenacious, ‘strong’ species ; but its 
migrating powers are obviously limited, and its seeds are not 
everywhere in the soil beyond the coal-measure grit areas, or 
the silurians, and the influence of their disintegrations; and 
after a long experience in Lincolnshire, one’s doubt of the entire 
Lincoln 
covered with Erica cinerea and Golden Rod (Solidago) lack 
a trace of ity and historic evidence of its ever having had a 
marketable quantitative existence are also wanting. 
These microscopic flaws, and some few others of omission 
hardly detract at all, however, from the pleasure to be derived 
froma perusal of this most captivating book. 
The work is well bound, has a good map, and a fine electro- 
type portrait of Lord De Tabley ; but the Blackberry spray in 
gold leaf on the cover is not, alas, with certainty referable to 
Rubus Warrenti or any other spies form known to science. 
~ Naturalist, 
