I893-] 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



247 



Between Bordeaux and L'Ancresse I was shown another plant 

 peculiar to these islands, Gnaphalium luteo-album ; it was growing by 

 the side of a dusty high road, and was nearly a foot high. What 

 curious habits some plants have. They are very like some human 

 beings. These Cudweeds are like the tramps, preferring the dust and 

 dirt of a beaten high road, when there are nice clean fields just over 

 the wall. Then look at the Michaelmas Daisy, how it revels in mud, 

 sticky black mud — covering itself completely, all except the purple- 

 rayed yellow-eyed flowers, which offer strange contrast to the mud 

 surrounding them. Then, the sturdy thistles, fit emblems of the 

 Scotsman with his fearless motto 'Nemo me impune lacessit.' While 

 the pure flowers of mountain saxifrages seem to point to those refined 

 beings, who, though on the earth are not of the earth, but keep them- 

 selves uncontaminated from all the dirt around them, breathing the 

 higher air, and dying when removed to lower spheres. I must mention 

 a few other plants, though a bare recital of names is uninteresting 

 enough, and not always profitable. Achillea ptarmica, the common 

 Sneeze w r ort is unknown here. The sw r eet Alyssum, the maritime form, 

 occurs in a few places on the coast. At Cobo I found a few plants of 

 the French Marigold, Calendula officinalis, which though not native, had 

 evidently not known cultivation for generations. 



In Alderney and Jersey, I found the spotted Rock Rose, Helianthe- 

 mum guttatum, each small orange petal having a deep 1 ed spot near the 

 base. These flowers were quite as fugacious as those of the 

 commoner cistus. In damp meadows I often saw feathery tufts of 

 the handsome Cypress Sedge, Cyperus longus ; and in St. Ouen's Bay 

 in Jersey, found the Scirpus pungens, which grows only there. It looks 

 like a miniature Sea-club-rush, and is of a beautiful soft brown colour. 

 Both Snapdragons are common in cultivated ground, the greater one 

 choosing old walls and gardens, the smaller preferring the open 

 fields. Roses, the islands are very deficient. The Yellow 7 Bartsia, 

 Bartsia viscosa, is often met with, and grows in one damp place over 

 two feet high. Of other plants of its natural order, I saw the Money- 

 wort, Sibthorpia euvopcea, Scrophularia scQrodonia, and tw r o Mulleins, 

 Verbascum thapsus and nigrum. Some of the sea cliffs are clothed with 

 the Privet, straggling over 'the rocks and bearing large fruit. No 

 escape from cultivation here. And near it flourishes the hairy form of 

 the Mouse-ear Hawkweed, Hicracium pihsella var. peleterianum ; a much 

 larger and more handsome plant than H . pihsella. Primus insititia, the 

 Bullace, grows in hedges and about the cliffs, the fruit w r as ripe, and 

 marvellous in size and quantity, looking good enough to eat, but it 

 would need a hungry man with leather-lined digestive organs to take 

 more than one. Babington's and one or two other rare Leeks, grow 

 on the cliffs below Fort George ; and hard by are many plants of the 



