BOTANY 



Kingston in their Flora Devoniensis (1829) ; they pointed out that owing 

 to the great variety of soil and inequality of surface there is probably no 

 county in the kingdom that presents a more diversified appearance, and 

 that although there are varying degrees of fertility and luxuriance 

 accompanying the principal geological formations, there are no peculiar 

 vegetable features applicable to the general distribution of the flowering 

 plants by which it is easy to distinguish such formations from each 

 other; the ploughman's spikenard {Inula Conyza) and a few other 

 species affect the Devonian system ; the old man's beard {Clematis 

 Vitalbd) also grows more luxuriantly among the crevices of those rocks 

 than elsewhere ; while the roast beef plant {Iris fcetidissima) and the elm 

 prevail mostly on the new red sandstone ; but none of these plants is 

 exclusively confined to any particular formation. Proximity to the sea- 

 coast produces an important botanical effect, and the same species may 

 be traced along the coast and occur on various kinds of geological forma- 

 tions ; ' thus the most characteristic botanical division of the county 

 would be into the central inland portion and those on either side of it 

 that border on the sea. That there is a great difference not only 

 between the mean annual temperatures of these tracts, but also a much 

 greater variation in the mean temperatures of the different months of a 

 year in the former than in the latter, experience sufficiently proves. 

 These differences arise from the elevation and exposure of the one, as 

 well as the large extent of boggy and unreclaimed land it includes, and 

 the sheltered and cultivated state of the other, together with its prox- 

 imity to the ocean' (Jones and Kingston, Flora Devoniensis, ii. 203). In 

 the result these authors did not form botanical districts for the purpose 

 of their book. Subsequently H. C. Watson for his 'Topographical 

 Botany divided the county into two vice-counties, south Devon and 

 north Devon, separated by an imaginary line which was roughly adapted 

 to the watershed ; it began by the Cornish boundary at the river Tamar 

 about midway between TaVistock and Launceston, thence passed over the 

 ridge of Dartmoor, joined the Grand Western Canal at Tiverton and 

 followed the course of that canal to the Somerset boundary in the parish 

 of Holcombe Rogus ; these two divisions are manifestly insufficient for 

 the present work. 



In 1 88 1 a botanical record committee was formed at Barnstaple in 

 connection with the Barnstaple Literary and Scientific Institution (the 

 predecessor of the North Devon Athenaeum) for collecting detailed and 

 systematic records of the natural distribution of north Devon plants, that 

 is of wild plants occurring in the part of the county drained by rivers 

 and streams which ultimately empty their waters into the sea on the 

 north coast; for this purpose the north Devon area of 158 parishes and 

 parts of parishes was divided into eleven districts, which were broadly 

 based on the existing hundreds of the county but with some modifica- 

 tions. These districts are too small to be adopted in this work, though 

 they were suitable for the objects of the local committee. 



The division of the county into districts now made is designed to 

 I 57 8 



