Localities for Neottia Nidus-avis. By J. Hardy. 533 



are cast in one piece, having been very carefully 'cored.' The 

 metal especially near the mouth, is very thin, and there is usually 

 a small hole nearer this end than the other [this is shown in the 

 Berwickshire specimen] to allow of a pin or rivet being inserted 

 to keep the ferrule on the shaft." (p. 339). Dr Evans quotes 

 numerous examples; one 14 inches long found in the Thames, 

 near London, has a portion of the wooden shaft inside, which 

 appears to be of beech. The hole for the pin is still visible in 

 the wood. " Canon Greenwell has a specimen from Antrim, (9i 

 inches) the end of which is worn obliquely, as if by trailing on 

 the ground. It has a single rivet hole." (lb. p. 339). None of 

 the examples quoted by Dr Evans exactly correspond in shape 

 with that now before us, which tapers more to a point than any 

 of them. J. H. 



Localities for Neottia Nidus-avis. 



Neottia Nidus-avis is one of our rarest Border plants, and new habitats 

 for it are always desirable. At the Club Meeting, loth Sept. 1887, Sir Walter 

 Elliot mentioned to me that he had observed it near Branxholme, and I omitted 

 to notify this in the Report. Breviously in Jeffrey's Hist, of Roxburghshire, 

 vol. iv., p. 398, " Denholm dean and the banks of the Jed near the King of the 

 Wood," are indicated by the Rev. James Duncan as the only Roxburghshire 

 localities that he was acquainted with. The Rev. Dr Farquharson includes it 

 in the Selkirkshire list, Club's Proc. , vol. vin., p. 86. It has been found in the 

 woods behind Haddington. In Berwickshire it is recorded in the Flora of the 

 Eastern Borders, p. 193, from Netherbyres and Dunglass dean— both discoveries 

 of the Rev. Andrew Baird. During one of Professor Balfour's excursions, 

 which I accompanied, there were several plants picked up on the north side of 

 Dunglass dean ; and much more recently, Capt. Norman and I gathered a plant 

 on the south side, about the middle of the dean. The only other Berwickshire 

 locality for the plant that I know of, is a deep shady ravine, between the farms 

 of Oldcambus Townhead and Penmanshiel, called Red Clews Cleugh (a 

 " cleugh " itself, but also scaured with other transverse red-hued •' cleughs " 

 or "clews.") On the north side it used to grow among thickets of nettles, 

 wound-wort, etc., under the shade of hazels ; on the south side among entangled 

 scrubby oaks, near where Pyrola media and Vicia sylvatica grew. It does not 

 appear regularly. In North-Northumberland, Mr Selby gathered it in the dean 

 at Twizell-house ; and Mr G. B, Tate, in the Cawledge woods near Alnwick. 

 (Tate's History of Alnwick, il., p. 428.) 



The genus was named by Dodonaeus, iVuo^k, which signifies a bird's nest, from 

 its matted roots, and it has come to us as " Bird's Nest," through this and the 

 German Vogel's nest. There is a good wood-cut of it in a rare little work of 

 Dodoens,entitled "De Stirpium Historia Commentariorum Imagines," Antwerp, 

 1559, p. 260 ; which appears also in Lyte's folio translation, 1578, p. 223. Lyte 

 calls it " Goose-nest." He says, p. 224, " The roote is nought else but a sorte 

 of threddy strings, as it were interlaced, snarled, or tangled one in another." 



J.H. 



