MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
425 
till it dawned upon my companion, the liev. R 1’. Murray, and 
myself, that we had come across a natural hybrid. I did not 
take a root to grow ; and as it was early in the season, 1 am unable 
to say whether these intermediate plants were sterile or not ; but 
judging from the specimens I have preserved, I still have no 
doubt the plants were of hybrid origin. It is most unlikely 
Bentham’s view will be adopted, that IS. infiaia and IS. maritima are 
one species. In the note that follows the one on which I have 
been commenting, Mr. Geldart suggests hybridity as a means of 
accounting for a plant which appeared to him intermediate between 
Tn'/vllum ayrariuin and T. procumbent. I have seen a plant in 
both Hants and Dorset which may very likely be just the form 
Mr. Geldart means. It is a form of T. procumbent, ;is is proved 
by leaf and stipule characters, but it has very much the facies and 
habits of T. ayrarium, and is sometimes taken for T. ayrarium. 
If the terminal leallet of Mr. Geldart’s plant is distinctly stalker!, 
and the stipule ovate or ovate-acuminate, I should have little 
doubt of its being the same as my plant, which I believe to be 
/. procumbent, var. majut, Koch. If, how'ever, the terminal leaflet 
is textile, and the stipule oblong-lanceolate, it ■would no doubt be 
T. ayrurium. These characters will bo found the easiest and 
safest for separating the two species. The shape of the heads 
elongates in both during flowering, and the colour of the flowers 
alters as they go over • and consequently these two latter characters 
form rather slippery ground for purposes of identification. 
E. F. Linton. 
Whales in the Cromer “ Forest-bed.” The occurrence of 
cetacean remains in the Cromer “ Forest-bed ” has long been 
known to all interested in Norfolk Geology, and some fine examples 
of large vertebrae are to be seen at the Norwich Museum in the 
Gunn collection, that much respected veteran geologist having 
been one of the first to note the presence of these huge mammals 
in this deposit.* In one of the Geological Survey Memoirs 
attention was called to a very large vertebra, which at that time w’as 
in the possession of the late Mr. William Barker, of Birmingham, 
but was not accessible.! This specimen has now come into the 
# See * Memorials of John Gunn,’ 1891, p. 47. 
f ‘ Vertebrata of the Forest-bed Series of Norfolk and Suffolk,’ 18S2. p. 108 ; 
and Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xlii. p. 321, 1886. 
