HINTS ON NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTING. 



By H. F. Parsons, M.D. 

 (Concluded.) 



In Botany, besides the name we should record the date. The day 

 and month will show the time of flowering ; the year is worth 

 recording, for various reasons, especially in the case of introduced 

 and newly recognised plants, or of those that are feared to be dying 

 out. The record of locality should show not only the name of the 

 place, but also the county or " vice-county." We should also record 

 the habitat — i.e. the sort of place in which our plant is growing : 

 e. " limestone rocks," ''pond," "hedge bank," "corn field," &c. 

 The geological formation should also be noted, as very different 

 groups of plants are found on different soils. The approximate 

 altitude above the sea-level, or in the case of marine plants, beneath 

 it, should be stated. Some of our plants are only found at low levels, 

 others only on mountains, while a few — as the whortleberry and the 

 little bedstraw {Galium saxatile) are found from the sea-level to the 

 summits of our highest British mountains. The zones of elevation 

 adopted by Mr. H. C. Watson in his writings on the distribution of 

 of British plants, are six — viz., three agrarian, and three arctic. 

 The boundary between the agrarian and arctic zones is marked by the 

 highest limit of the cultivation of corn, and by the highest limit of 

 the brake fern — i.e., about 1500 feet. The agrarian region is divided 

 into infer-agrarian, mid-agrarian, and super-agrarian zones : the first 

 being characterised by the presence of the wild clematis ; the second 

 by the absence of this shrub, but by the continued presence of the 

 buckthorn, the maple, the black and white bryony, the cornel, and 

 the spindle-tree ; the third by the absence of these common hedge- 

 row plants. The arctic region is divided into infer-arctic, mid-arctic, 

 and super-arctic zones, which are marked by the successive disappear- 

 ance of the cross-leaved heath and the ling. High north latitude has 

 the same effect upon the flora as elevation ; thus, plants are found on 

 the sea-shore in Scotland, which in England are mountain plants. 

 The infer-agrarian zone includes the part of England south of the 

 Humber, Trent, and Dee, and rising to a height of about 900 feet; 

 the mid-agrarian zone occupies the low grounds between the Humber 

 and Dee on the south, and the Clyde and Tay on the north (this is 

 therefore the zone in which the lowlands of Yorkshire are situated) ; 

 in the north of Scotla,nd the land near the sea-level is in the super- 



