398 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



I feel constrained at this point to record the damage done by golf, 

 since this same species Eryngium campestre has been destroyed by the 

 players near New Romney in Kent, whilst from across the Atlantic I 

 learn that a rare Clematis is in danger of the same fate on Staten Island.* 



In 1882 the late Professor Paley published a long and interesting list 

 of the flowering plants then found by him on Barnes Common.t Barnes 

 Common is still an open space, protected by a body of conservators from 

 all depredators except golfers ; but I very much doubt if Teesdalia 

 wudicauUs, and some others among the species found by Paley in 1882, 

 can be found there now. The Common is surrounded by houses and 

 railways, and traveised by well-drained roads, and it is exposed to an 

 ever-increasing volume of smoke from Putney, Hammersmith, and the 

 rest of London. The smoke nuisance is by no means merely a senti- 

 mental one. Some years ago Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace expressed to me 

 the fear that, as it has already all but demolished the lichen-flora of 

 Epping Fores t,J on the one side, and of Kew Gardens on the other, 

 London smoke was killing the junipers on the more distant Surrey hills. 

 But not only are increasing areas round our manufacturing centres being 

 rendered barren and ugly, while the health of the community is suffering 

 from the contamination of the air ; for, as Mr. Druce has reminded me in 

 a letter on this subject, we may well call the attention of Parliament to 

 the fact that the very life of the buildings in which they hold their 

 deliberations is being shortened by this same agency. It is, moreover, 

 one that could at least be checked if even existing legislation were 

 enforced. 



We must all rejoice in the vastly increased appreciation of the beauties 

 of the plant-world, especially by those "in populous city pent," and in 

 the well-meant, but often misdirected, efforts of the suburban amateur 

 gardener. These have, however, created a demand which has had, and is 

 having, truly deplorable results. The beautiful Sea- Holly (Eryngium 

 maritimum), loosely rooted on our sandy or shingly shores, has been torn 

 up wholesale by the roots to satisfy the artistic tastes of the towns, and 

 has now disappeared from several of its former localities. As Darwin's 

 work on " Insectivorous Plants " caused Drosera rotundifolia to be for a 

 short time offered for sale in the streets of the City, so it may have been 

 his work on Orchids that spurred the suburban gardener to the ambitious, 

 but almost certainly futile, effort to cultivate our native representatives 

 of that remarkable group. Possibly from the absence of the appropriate 

 mycorhiza these species even at Kew constantly die out and require to be 

 renewed. Within the last few years hundreds of the local Orchis 

 purpurc.it (fusca), one of our most striking British species, have been 

 uprooted on the Downs of East Kent and sold — together with bunches of 

 its blossoms — in the streets of Folkestone, and even the common 0. Morio 

 and 0. maculata are beginning to show signs of diminution in that 

 district from the same cause. >? During this spring most British species 



* Mrs. E. G. Britton, How the Wild Flowers are Protected. 

 f West London Observer, February 18, 1882. 



X Rev. J. M. Crombie " On the Lichen-Flora of Epping Forest, and the Causes 

 affecting its Recent Diminution," Tram. Essex Field Club, iv. (1884), pp. 54-75. 

 § Webb, MeDakin, and Gray, South-Eastern Naturalist, vol. viii. (1 ( J03), p. 58. 



