128 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
infirmary of the other monastic houses. The hermits were for- 
tunate to introduce a variety of Peony that could flourish on rocks 
always exposed to the salt spray, and this hardiness has helped 
the plant to- maintain its position down to the present time, and 
to give to the neighbourhood of Bristol the opportunity to claim 
that one more English wild flower grows within its narrow 
borders, and in no' other part of the kingdom. 
Another plant that would have been kept in cultivation on the 
island is the Samphire, which still clothes the surface of the rocks 
facing the Channel. Its fleshy leaves are specially adapted for 
life in the sea air, and when pickled was a favourite relish with 
those monks who had to find their food in situations near the 
sea shore. 
On some other occasion it might be worth while to consider 
whether the many aromatic herbs that grow so freely about the 
neighbourhood of Tickenham Hill may not in some way owe 
their existence to an ancient monastery which at one time 
existed, there ; but in calling your attention to the flowers that 
still adorn St. Vincent's Rocks a new interest may have been 
aroused in that well-known and ever attractive outlook, and may 
bring home to some of you the fact that the richness and diversity 
of its flora, as admitted by botanists from all parts of the 
kingdom, may indeed be due to the cultivation of pot-herbs by 
the hermits of olden time, and brought down to us by the per- 
manency with which those herbs cling to their place of growth 
when left to the loving care of Nature. 
January 215/, 1915. 
