+ 
880 MOSS-FLORA OF THE DOWARD HILLS. 
upshot being that, together with a few since observed, the total 
number of species of ig _— and fern-allies (re serrHer ys ee 
the lines of the London Catalogue of British Plants, ed. 7, 
exclusive on — recorded for the Dowards is 626 ; ‘aitchacth - 
them being confined, so far as Herefordshire is concerned, to 
these hi 
Rich as this little tract is thus proved to be in phanerogamic 
oe it appears to be no less so in the smaller group of true 
mo 
je es nor for so long a term of years, as the flowering plants 
yet the proportion of mosses known to inhabit the Doward Hills is 
already rather more than three-fifths of those recorded for the whole 
of Herefordshire ; and this in a county which has been very fairl 
worked over site its whole area in this group of plants, oe 
whioh possesses a decidedly rich moss-flora. It must be rem 
bered, moreover, that while the flowering plants of every Setniy 
contain many species whose citizenship is uncertain, the whole of 
the moss-flora is undoubtedly native; such an occurrence as the 
introduction of an exotic species by human agency being well-nigh 
unrecorded. A still more remarkable result comes out when a 
rissa s made hy the totals of British mosses; 191 out of 
568—or what over one-third of the total moss vegetation of 
the British heehee present on the Dowards. This one-third 
includes several rare or very rare species, one having not been 
hitherto detected elsewhere in Britain. The present writer, in the 
course of a winter day’s ramble in 1884, ase upon the Greater 
Do 
total number of species known to inhabit Britain 
The area comprised in the following list admits of being simply 
and well defined ; being bounded on the N. by the line of the Ross 
and Monmouth turnpike-road, from the village of Whitchurch to 
the private gas-works of the Wyaston Leys establishment ; to 
the E., S., and W. by the tortuous course of the River Wye, which 
here also forms the county boundary. The space contained within 
these boundaries ee about 2126 acres of singularly varied 
surface. narrow I ‘ding cultivated sb ae fringes the N.W. ; 
and E., a still n see rim of alluvial meadow, disappearing 
altogether in many slacea, site along the river. The kernel of this 
thin is a mass of hill with a shallow soil, resting for more 
than half its area upon mountain limestone, an i 
heads with a slight depression between them, which are called 
respectively the Great and the Little Dowards, from the fact that 
the area of the greater is between tw o and two and a half times 
that of the lesser hill. The Little Dowa 
about 450 ft. above the aver bok and 
by the of the present owner, J. M. Bannerman, 
Esq, Tt was at one time the richest of the two in botany; but the 
effect of its conversion into a deer-park has to destroy most of 
. er plants, with the exception of Atropa Belladonna L., of 
