28o YORKSHIRE NATURALISTS AT SEDBERGH. 



they had never previously had the opportunity of seeing in situ, and, 

 truly (from their point of view), no excursion of the Union was ever 

 more successful or fertile in discovery. It was peculiarly enjoyable, 

 too, for other reasons — the elements were propitious, and the spirit 

 of fellowship in science was fostered by the presence of the Kendal 

 naturalists from the adjoining county, with their cryptogam ic 

 specialists, Messrs. Martindale and Stabler, famous for their pains- 

 taking, original labours amid the Bryophytes and Lichens, who added 

 not a little open-air instruction to the other pleasures of the day, 

 and appreciably swelled the sum-total of those 'results' which con- 

 stitute the raison d'etre of the Union's field-gatherings. 



During the day, by one or other of the botanical parties, over 

 eighty uncommon or local Phanerogams were observed. Most of 

 these were, of course, of the montane type in distribution, some few 

 of them — like Pmnus padiis, Rosa inollis, and Geranium sylvaticuin — 

 forming, by their ubiquity at lower levels, the salient feature of the 

 vegetation ; but two exceptions are specially noteworthy — the 

 '■ colonist ' Linaria minor {viscida) plentiful amid the cinders of 

 the railway track from Ingleton onwards, and Rosa spinosissima 

 (characteristically a plant of calcareous soils or maritime sand-flats), 

 a few bushes of which were noticed in the road-side hedge-bank near 

 Howgill. The last named rose, with Rosa mollis^ Epilobium alsini- 

 foliiun^ and the three Hieracia — H. tridetitatujn, lunbellatum, and 

 erocatum — seem to have been hitherto unknown to the local 

 workers, since their names do not appear in the otherwise full hst — 

 ' Florula Sedbergensis ' — compiled by the Rev. W. Thompson, with 

 the co-operation of Mr. John Handley. The Spignel {Meum atha- 

 manticum), recorded nearly 250 years ago for the locality, was con- 

 firmed as occurring in some abundance, but local, in pastures and 

 on broken banks over a restricted area having Beck-houses, near the 

 Lune beyond Howgill, for its centre of dispersion. Being in fruit, 

 the peculiar odour of this aromatic umbellifer, resembling the 

 ' cattle-spice ' preparations of Fenugreek (and like them due to 

 Coumarin?), was very noticeable. Local farmers averred they knew 

 not of any surviving employment of it in rural beast-pharmacy ; 

 but regarded it as a 'nasty, stinking thing' of Mile account' which 

 ' yow ' and ' kye ' alike left uncropped amid the pasturage. The 

 great bulk of the species noted were, of course, already known, and 

 entered for their stations in the 'Flora of West Yorkshire,' e.g., 

 Alchemilla alpina, Epilobium alsinifolium (with its large form, anceps 

 Fr.), Saxifraga stellar is and Circcea alpina\ but the day's labours 

 resulted in the observance of five species new to (not down in) the 

 Flora for that part of the Lune river-basin under examination. 



Naturalist, 



