Mercurialis.] euphoebiace.'e. 445 



II. Mercueialis, Linn. Mercury. 



"Dioecious or uioncecious.— Barren flowers : — Perianth single, 

 tripartite. Stamens 9 — 12, without any rudiment of an ovary ; 

 anthers of 3 globose lobes. — Fertile flowers: — Perianth single, 

 tripartite. Filaments 3 — 3, without anthers. Styles 2, single. 

 Capsiole 2 -celled; cells 1-seeded, bursting at the back." — Br. Fl. 



1. M. perennis, L. Perennial or Dog's Mercury. "Dioecious, 

 fertile flowers in stalked lax spikes, stem perfectly simple, leaves 

 rough, root creeping perennial." — Br. Fl. p. 365. E. B. t. 1873. 



In woods, gloves, and on moist shady hedgebanks ; abundantly. Fl. February 

 —April. Tf.. 



About Kyde, at St. John's, Apley, in Quarr copse, &c. Profusely in all the 

 woods about Shanklin, Appuldurcomhe, in the park at Swainston, &c., &c. 



The tender green herbage of the Dog's Mercury is nearly the first to appear 

 above ground in spring, and is almost persistent in mild winters. Root or rather 

 rhizoma slender, terete, white or reddish, creeping horizontally, giving off at 

 intervals bundles of branching and partly downy fibres, which again strike out at 

 ri){ht angles to its course. Stems one or two, seldom more from the same root, 

 from about 10 to 15 inches high, erect, solid, rounded, slightly and oppositely 

 winged between the tumid joints and on the same side with the leaves, roughish, 

 especially above, with short, stiff, spreading hairs, their lower joint or two leafless. 

 Leaves 2, 3, or 4 inches long, opposite, distant, the lowermost pair much smaller 

 than the rest and very remote, the middle pairs largest, the uppermost again dimi- 

 nished in size, ovate or ovato-lanceolate, acute or even acuminate, closely and 

 evenly crenato-serrate, the serratures thickened, incurved, and obliquely tipped 

 with a minute pellucid gland, deep green and often somewhat shining, fluxile, 

 strongly veined, roughish on both sides with short, simple, erect pubescence. 

 Petioles scarcely an inch long at most, semiterete, hairy and grooved. Stipules 

 small, triangular-lanceolate, quite entire, deflexed, a pair at the base of each 

 petiole on its upper side, and between which in the axils of the lowermost pair of 

 leaves is a rudimentary flower-stalk like a greenish gland. Floiper-spilces axillary, 

 solitary, simple, wanting in the lowermost pair of leaves, and occasionally there 

 is one deficient in some of the upper pairs, erect, slender, furrowed, angular, 

 naked for a great part of their length, those of the staminate plant mostly as long 

 as or longer than the leaves, many-flowered ; of the pistillate plant much shorter, 

 almost concealed by the leaves and few-flowered. — Staminate flowers in small, 

 sessile, alternate, somewhat remote clusters, each blossom very shortly pedicellate, 

 subtended by ovate bracts, of which there is one much larger iramediiktely under 

 each- cluster. Perianth deeply cleft into 3 roundish, ovate, concave, green 



Euphorbia Cyparissias is plentifully naturalized in the shrubbery at North- 

 wood park, W. Cowes, the residence of the late George Henry Ward, Esq. : Miss 

 G. E. Kilderbee .'.'.' 



E. pilosaP — The Rev. G. E. Smith recollects gathering a species of Euphorbia 

 with hairy fruit some years ago in a wood along the shore W. of Ryde, which, as 

 far as his memory serves, agreed with specimens of E. pilosa since seen by him at 

 Oxford. Nothing of the kind has fallen in my way there yet. 



\E. Paralias. — This species, formerly a stranger to the Isle of Wight, was 

 sown by our lamented author in 1848, on the sandy spits of St. Helens in the 

 East Medina, and of Norton, near Freshwater, in the West Medina. In the for- 

 mer place it has now been observed by Dr. Bell-Salter for several years, occurring 

 with increasing frequency all along the shore at the foot of the sandbanks on the 

 side towards the open sea above the shingle. Vide Phytol. vol. iii. p. 820. 

 —Edrs:] 



