Museum Neics. 



351 



their vegetative parts, leaf, flower, stem, etc., adapt their 

 ' characters ' — as we call this or that ' feature ' — to what best 

 helps their continuing to live. The Hey-beck open marsh 

 Carex shews no trace of hybridisation, and in its individual 

 perigynia and the nutlets within is exactly type C. sylvatica 

 (Huds.), (elliptic, obscurely veined, with a long cloven smooth 

 beak, and trigonous nut), so that, as with most ' varieties,' 

 the differences which yet make up a strikingly dissimilar facies 

 are in vegetative developments, rather than ' specific ' essen- 

 tials. In proposing for it the style of a Variety, its title may 

 not unfitly suggest that Carex capillaris L. of Gordale, which the 

 late Prof. Babington placed next to strigosa Huds. in his 

 diagnostic arrangement : — Carex sylvatica Huds. var. capil- 

 lariformis mihi. ^ spike one, distinct or part of top catkin ; 

 9 spike, curved, brief, 7 to 15-flowered, all (except the upper- 

 most) from short sheaths, on very longly exserted capillary 

 pensile pedicels, three to live times the length of spike. 

 Two or three stalks aggregate and spring from the topmost 

 sheath but one (in some cases, not all). The uppermost 

 female spikelet with only 5-7 perigynia and so looking ovate, 

 springs from the same sheath as the male spikelet. Spikelets 

 and glumes of a bronz\' green-brown. Habit, tufted from a 

 brief rhizome. Height, 8-12 inches. Frondage of a full yellow- 

 green, outcurving vase-like from tuft, 2 to 3 millimetres in 

 breadth of rough leaf. 



The whole plant has a healthy appearance in its seat, virile, 

 hardy, perfecting its fruits abundantly, evidently quite capable 

 of holding its own in competition with pasture grass ; but that it 

 is a specialised descendant from a dry woodland slope two 

 hundred, or it may be only a hundred years back, I am con- 

 vinced ; and supported in that by the panning-out presence of 

 the Woodland Loosestrife (now creeping like L. mimmiilaria 

 through the wet matt grass). Its immediate associates now 

 have come, I doubt not, with the perhaps recently broken-out 

 spring in the pasture above, much later than the Carex silvatica 

 and ovalis and Lysimachia nemorum. The grass swamp is a 

 recent one ; I looked in vain for Triglochin, that surest sign 

 of an old soil regime passing away. 



Amongst the additions to the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, during the 

 last twelve months, we notice local specimens of the Common Crane, 

 Ruff, Gadwal, skull of Bos priwigenius and Lesser Shrew. 



igog Oct. I. 



