LEE : BOTANY OF THE EASTERN BORDERS. 



343 



and Potamogeion perfoUatus. The Dipper and a colony of Swifts, 

 hereabouts, ever on the look out for food, coupled with the plash of 

 trout, lent an additional charm to the quiet beauty of the scene. 



At Pease Dean, one of the many such wooded ravines opening 

 to the German Ocean on the Berwickshire coast, Aspidium aculeatum^ 

 sub-sp. A. angulare Willd., appears to be as much at home, and as 

 abundant, as do the commoner ferns by the rills in our Yorkshire 

 woods. Nearer the sea Equisetum viaximum Lamk. rears its stately 

 proportions j further inland up the dean Filago 7?imima Fries, w^as 

 just visible on a dry bank. Still further from the coast-line at 

 Edmund's Dean, a wild stony rent in the hill side, besides noting 

 Geiun intermedium^ Aspleniiim adiantiun- nigrum^ and masses of 

 Polypodiiim Dryopteris clothing dry rocky heaps more as does Parsley 

 fern at much higher altitudes, we also saw a Weasel and an Adder, 

 which sight helped somewhat to compensate the unsuccessful search 

 for Trientalis eitropcea, recorded at — not this station, but the 

 adjoining — Blackburn Rig Dean, for which we had mistaken this one. 

 We bagged fine specimens of Pyrola media at Penmanshiel Woods, 

 near Grant's House. Here, too, close to the great London and 

 Edinburgh road, the best find of all must be recorded, viz.: — a grand 

 flowering plant of Vicia Orobus DC., the Bitter Vetch. 



It is stated in the report of a meeting of the Berwickshire 

 Naturalists' Club ('Proceedings 1879-81') at Grant's House in 1881, 

 that just fifty years previously this rare Vetch was discovered at this 

 station, but 'has now disappeared' (1881). So this re-discovery of 

 ours must be put down as something to be proud of. We devoted a 

 long day to Newham Bog, some miles on the Northumbrian side, 

 and to a long coast-cliff walk northwards from Berwick. The day 

 was one of those exceptionally bright ones w^e get now and then, the 

 sea dancing in the brilliant sunlight, and the atmosphere free from 

 haze. Newham Bog is just a choice primeval swamp, alas ! so few of 

 which now remain to give delight to the botanist. Here the thousands 

 of Pyrola rotundifolia and of Epipadis palustris carpeting the bog, 

 the one with chaste globose corollas, the other with tropical-like 

 flowers; a perfect jungle, six feet from root to spikelets, of Carex 

 paniculata, vdth CEnanthe fistuldsa, Salix aiirita^ and other typical 

 bog plants, combined to make a most entrancing natural picture. On 

 the massive old ramparts at Berwick, Diplotaxis teriuifolia DC. was in 

 fine bloom. This is a more northerly station for the Wall Rocket 

 than Hooker gives ('from the Cheviots southward') in the 3rd ed. 

 ' Student's Flora.' Now continuing our walk along the sinuous crests 

 of the sea cliffs to Burnmouth, we notice Siletie maritima^ Plantago 

 mariti?na, Atripkx patula, sub-sp. has fata, var. A. triangularis Wllld., 



Oct. 1885. 



