BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
83 
every one present, who like myself has often spent hours in 
the unsuccessful search after plants whose place of growth is 
described in some such general terms as “ Tonbridge Wells,” 
“ about Dartford” or “ between Cobham and Cuxton,” will 
at once admit, that with reference to those plants which occur 
only in one or two localities, even these directories are by 
no means sufficiently precise and exact. 
And I would ask, why is not the habitat of a plant 
pointed out with as much precision as the position of a rock ? 
and why is not the former discovered by the Botanist as 
readily as the latter is avoided by the navigator. It is simply 
because the Botanist has hitherto been contented with a 
mere verbal description of the locality to which he referred, 
while the mariner has by means of the compass laid down on 
his chart, the exact relation of the spot he describes to some 
of the known objects by which it is surrounded, and by 
which it may certainly be recognized by subsequent observers. 
These remarks on the imperfect methods at present em- 
ployed by Botanists to point out the stations at which parti- 
cular plants are produced, were suggested to me by the diffi- 
culty we experienced in discovering the Althaea hirsuta and 
Salvia pratensis in our late excursions to Cobham, and I 
have been induced to contrast their inaccuracy with that of 
the mariner, in order more clearly to point out the advantages 
which would result from making the compass the companion 
of the vasculum, and to justify me in suggesting that in all 
our future attempts to describe localities we should carefully 
select two of the more conspicuous objects in the neigbour- 
hood, and accurately note their relation (as ascertained by 
the magnetic needle) to the spot described. 
By the adoption of this means not only may a church or a 
castle, a windmill or a barn, a mountain point, a water stream, 
or line of road, be made an almost infallible guide to a fertile 
spot which it might cost the inquirer hours to discover ; but 
the limits over which some of the more strictly local plants 
are now diffused being thus accurately noted, their further 
extension may hereafter be observed, and possibly our know- 
ledge of the laws which regulate the dispersion of plants may 
thus be increased. 
Having made these remarks on the advantages which 
would result to Botanists from a more frequent use of the 
compass, I proceed now to the proper object of this narra- 
tive, which is to place on record among the papers of this 
Society a brief memorandum of the place of growth of some 
