THE SAMPHIRE— continued. 
yellowish, and the disk white, at first depressed but becoming afterwards pyramidal. 
The recurved styles crown the globose fruit, which becomes a deep purple. 
Crithmum maritimum Linne ranges from the Crimea round the coasts of the 
Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic to the Canaries, Ireland, and 
the south-west of Scotland, but not north of Kent on the east of Britain. It is 
interesting that the earliest record of the species as British should be from Dover. 
This is Turner’s, who, in his “Names of Herbes,” writes : — 
“Crithmus named also crithamus & Batis is called in englishe Sampere, it is named of some Herbaries creta marina, it 
groweth much in rockes & cliffes beside Douer.” 
Gerard gives the same locality, and adds, inter alia , that the plant has a 
“smell delightful and pleasant” and is “of a spicie taste, with a certaine saltnesse." “The leaves,” he continues, “kept 
in pickle and eaten in sallads with oile and vineger is . . . the pleasantest sauce, most familiar and best agreeing with man’s 
bodie for digestion of meates.” 
It does not, however, follow that Shakespeare in introducing the plant in the 
magnificent passage in “ King Lear,” as growing at Dover, had read either Turner 
or Gerard. Dover Samphire may have been as well known in the London shops 
of his day as are Dover soles at present. The plant may occasionally be found, 
as at Porth Gwylan, Carnarvonshire, growing abundantly in fields near the sea ; 
but it is certainly more frequent on cliffs above high-water mark but within 
reach of the spray. Hence we have numerous references to what Shakespeare 
calls the “ fearful trade ” of the cliffsmen who collected it. John Philips, in his 
now forgotten “ Cider,” writes : — 
“ Nor untrembling canst thou see 
How from a craggy rock, whose prominence 
Half overshades the ocean, hardy men 
Fearless of rending winds and dashing waves, 
Cut samphire, to excite the squeamish gust 
Of pamper’d luxury.” 
Smith, in his “ History of Waterford,” says : — 
“ It is terrible to see how people gather it, hanging by a rope several fathoms from the top of the impending rocks, as it 
were in the air ” ; 
and Bromfield records that the cliffsmen, who in his time collected it “ at great 
personal risk,” paid an annual tribute for the privilege to the lord of the manor of 
Freshwater. The most striking illustration of the precise habitat is the story told 
by Burnett of a wreck near Beachy Head in 1821. A small party of survivors, 
clinging to a ledge of rock in the storm while the tide was rising, were just about 
to risk their lives in the attempt to swim to land, when one of their number, 
seeing a plant of Samphire below them, assured them that the sea would not rise as 
high as their foothold, since Samphire never grows within reach of submergence ; 
and, trusting in his botanical knowledge, they were saved. 
