Peacock : The Henbane. 



121 



Verbascinji Thapsus ! — the description would not fit either. 

 Years passed, the old lad}' was gathered to her fathers, and 

 finally one winter the hedge was 'cut back.' Five plants 

 of the Henbane appeared next season, as prophesied, and finally 

 three plants I could not recognise. They were carefully watched 

 o\^r and guarded. The Henbane left no successors, but *Joe 

 Maunders,' as if to prove the whole truth of the old woman's 

 observation, has left a handsome progeny annually with us ever 

 since. The species on flowering turned out to" be Verhasciim 

 Blattaria. Both species seeded most freely, and I have speci- 

 mens from these very plants in my type collection of seeds. 

 From the tens of thousands of ripe seeds, a four-foot high and 

 very wide bushy plant of Hyoscyamus produced, not to name the 

 four small plants of the species, not a single seedling has ever 

 been detected. I have no doubt, however, if the bank were 

 ' forked over ' a plentiful crop would be the result at this dis- 

 tance of time. My experience of Hyoscyamus is very much like 

 Mr. Hey's. Some very dry earth and mortar from the founda- 

 tions of a waggon shed at Bottesford, pulled down in 1866, 

 after standing at least eighty years, produced a plentiful crop of 

 plants when mixed with the stiff" clay of the Lower Lias. It is 

 here a piece of wisdom imparted to me by my second Cadney friend, 

 the late Mr. H. Trevor, comes in. When I asked him to show 

 me where Hyoscyamus grew, he said ' It's no use going an' 

 looking for it, an' I tell ye why. The whorrums (worms) take 

 the seed a stickling to their bodies under ground, and you've to 

 dig 'em up before this plant grows, for they must lig under 

 ground so long' — he did not say how long — 'before it'll grow 

 at all.' He suggested I should look out in the gravel pit 

 'where the top soil is often moved' ; and it was on the road 

 from the pit spoken of where I first met with the Henbane at 

 Cadney. In that season, 1894, I found it in a number of places. 

 Datura is another sporadic species which appeared at Bottesford 

 along with Henbane; neither species has failed to show in the 

 garden spoken of at longer or shorter intervals since that time. 

 Seeds of all these species have now been lying in my type 

 collection for ten years. If anyone would like to experiment with 

 them, and would publish the results in 'The Naturalist,' I shall 

 be happy to supply them with all I can spare. As a rule seeds 

 rapidly lose their fertility in the dry air of my study, in the 

 collection tubes, which are only closed with cotton wool. I have 

 tested by experiment many of the grasses and other small seeds 

 to find them growing rapidly less and less fertile by lapse of 

 time. I have, however, never tested any species of the Solanacecc 

 or Scrophulariacece. 



1904 April I. 



