66 Hey : Caucalis daucoides in Yorkshire. 



FOSSIL PLANTS. 

 Judg-ing- from the number of v^aluable monog-raphs that have 

 recently appeared dealing with fossil plants, it is obvious that 

 the study of palaeobotany is being- followed at the present time 

 in a manner that is most gratifying-. Mr. Robert Kidston, the 

 Chairman of the Yorkshire Fossil Flora Committee, who has 



contributed most useful papers on the 

 Carboniferous V eg-etation of the County 

 to the ' Transactions of the Yorkshire 

 Naturalists' Union,' has recently pre- 

 sented a Memoir to the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh. It is entitled ' The 

 Fossil Plants of the Carboniferous 

 Rocks of Canonbie, Dumfriesshire, and 

 parts of Cumberland and Northumber- 

 land.' In this the Carboniferous vege- 

 tation of the two areas is compared, 

 the w^ork being- facilitated by the col- 

 Rhodea moravica. lection made in Northumberland and 



Cumberland by Mr. John Rhodes. 

 Tables of distribution and some excellent plates accompany the 

 memoir, as well as a few illustrations in the text. One of these, 

 representing- a specimea of Rhodea moravica^ is here reproduced 

 by the courtesy of the Council of the Edinburgh Society. The 

 specimen is from a shore section, westof Budle, Northumberland. 



^ » V ■ 



Caucalis daucoides Linn, in Yorkshire. — This dainty little 

 umbelliferous plant seems to be much more common and general 

 in Yorkshire than the records indicate. Near the village of 

 Flamborough it grows in abundance, though there is no record 

 in the Flora of the East Riding for that district. In this 

 neighbourhood it shows a preference for villages, and grows at 

 Seamer, East Ayton, and Snainton, but in each case at the out- 

 skirts of the place — not in the intervening country. Still in 

 other districts it grows far away from all houses, and though 

 described as a 'colonist,' it looks very much like a native on the 

 sandhills that line the North Cleveland coast, and on Grimbald's 

 Crag, near Knaresborough. At York it had escaped observa- 

 tion till I pointed it out to some botanists from the Friends' 

 School in Bootham, in a lane near Acomb. The plant is not 

 difficult to discriminate. Its pale delicate leaves are already 

 (20th January) developed, and wiien bruised exhale a pleasant 

 aroma unlike the scent of any other plant of the same order. — 

 W. C. Hey, West Ayton. 



Naturalist^ 



