MR. A. BENNETT ON EAST ANGLIAN PLANTS. 
437 
the third of Sir W. J. Hosker’s Brit. Flora, 1835, we have the 
excellent critical remarks of Mr. W. Wilson, but unfortunately 
they rarely touch on East Anglian species. 
I can only hope that what I have been able to place on 
record will stimulate East Anglian botanists to study the 
life-histories of these species, as year by year it becomes 
more evident some are gradully tending towards extinction, 
either from drainage, enclosures, cultivation, or other causes, 
and among ferns to the senseless gathering of large quanti- 
ties for sale, and Mr. Davey, in his Flora of Cornwall, 1909, 
relates that “ A collector once boasted to me that he 
had recently despatched a truck-load of roots (of Osmunda 
regalis L), weighing over five tons, from one of our local 
railway stations.” That, unfortunately, botanists are not 
blameless, is too evident, for the case of Arenaria gothica Fr. 
which was found in Yorkshire in 1889, and the discoverer 
wrote me “that there were hundreds of specimens”; the 
next year he could hardly find one, “ nearly every specimen 
had been carried off.” Fortunately it was discovered in two 
other stations, and these were not published. 
Senecio paludosus L. 
In the British Museum (Natural History) under Eng. 
Botany t. 650, October 1st, 1799, “ Notes on the Drawings for 
English Botany,” is the following : “ The Rev. W. Hemsted* 
found at Wangford near Bangham (Brandon), Suffolk by 
Francis Eagle, Esq., Junr.” ; and under Asperugo procumbens 
E. B. t. 661, “ L. paludesus was gathered in Lakenheath Fen, 
not far from Wangford.” Sir J. E. Smith goes on to say, 
“ This is one of the rarest plants we have figured, and great 
pains should be taken with it, cannot the inflorescence be 
more expressed at least in outline. A large or lower leaf also 
wanted.” Wangford Fen adjoined Lakenheath Common Fen, 
and no doubt at this date it occurred in both. 
* 1746 — 1824. His plants are in the Bot. Dep. of the Brit. Museum. 
