Hepori of Meetings. By the President. 457 



herbs, whose valuable anti-scorbutic properties were better 

 appreciated in " the good old days " of scurvy than now. 



The same remark indeed may be passed with regard to the 

 larger proportion of our wild plants, whose medicinal virtues, 

 so well understood by our ancestors, are now eclipsed by mineral 

 remedies, or used only in the shape of an ''active principle" 

 bought at the chemist's shop. 



But CocMearia is, besides, interesting as being a genus which 

 has its habitat, like Armeria maritima " Thrift " or '* Sea Pink," 

 on sea shore and mountain top alike, but rarel}' at intermediate 

 stations. The ordinary form, officinalis, which has the lower 

 leaves roundish, cordate at the base, or reniform, is common 

 enough at the Fames, and can scarcely have been overlooked by 

 any one who has wandered along our coasts, or penetrated the 

 rocky glens and recesses of our mountain ranges. The variety 

 Danica, however, belongs exclusively to the sea-coast, and is 

 known by its deltoid, ivy-shaped lower leaves, whence the old 

 name of the plant, "Ivy Scurvy Grrass." Smith, in the English 

 Flora, declares that it is unchanged by cultivation, and never 

 alters ; but our Dr Johnston, in his most charming of all books 

 of the sort, " The Natural History of the Eastern Borders," con- 

 fesses that he was often puzzled to know to which species to 

 refer his specimens. 



Indeed, whether Danica is entitled to take rank as a species, 

 or whether it is merely a variaole state of the normal type of 

 the plant, is uncertain, and is illustrative of the difficulty which 

 is so constantly experienced of deciding what a species really is. 



A.t five o'clock we all gathered for dinner, which was well 

 served, picnic fashion, on the grass on Fame Island, close to 

 St Cuthbert's Chapel — fifty years ago a mediaeval ruin, part of 

 which was inhabited by the light attendant, but which sub- 

 sequently was restored by Archdeacon Thorp with the double 

 object of perpetuating the name of the famous saint and of pro- 

 viding a place for divine worship, which is occasionally held in 

 it, the Eev. W. F. Keeling, vicar of Holy Island, having a few 

 days before visited it for that purpose. Within is a monument to 

 Grace Darling, the popular heroine of the Fames, who lived 

 with her father on the Longstone, died in 1842, aged 26, and 

 was buried in Bamburgh Churchyard. The tower on the brow 

 of the hill is called Prior Castle's Tower, having been built by a 

 Prior of that name about 1500 as a place of secm-ity and defence 



2e 



