THE ENTOMOLOGISTS 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 197.] SATUEDAY, JULY 14, 1860 [Price Id. 
FLORA OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE. 
Mr. Babington’s latest publication 
bears the above title, and is, without 
exception, the best specimen of a Local 
Flora it has been our good luck to 
meet wiih. 
The county is divided into several 
districts, according to its geological 
features, and localities are given in 
each of these for the plants which 
occur. A prefatory table, showing the 
geographical distribution of plants in 
Cambridgeshire, enables one to see at 
a glance how any genus or order is 
disseminated over the county. The 
topographical remarks with which the 
volume commences inform us that three 
great districts may be noticed — The 
Chalk Country. The Clayey District 
and The Fens. 
As Clay is not particularly attractive 
to entomologists, we will confine our 
observations at present to the Chalk 
and the Fens. The Chalk in England 
is fast disappearing from the botanist 
and the entomologist: it is true the 
soil remains, but no longer in its 
native wild stale ; by dint of top- 
dressings and artificial manures it is 
compelled to bear crops, and many a 
breezy down, where ere now we have 
collected some of the choicest Micros, 
is now turned into a productive fium. 
This has happened within the last 
fifteen years between Croydon and 
Merstham, and it has happened also 
in Cambridgeshire. “ Until recently 
(within sixty years) most of the chalk 
district was open and covered with a 
beautiful coating of turf, profusely de- 
corated with Anemone Pulsatilla, Astra- 
galus Hypoglottis and other interesting 
plants. It is now converted into arable 
land, and its peculiar plants mostly 
confined to small waste spots by road- 
sides, pits, and the very few banks 
which are too steep for the plough. 
Thus many species which were for- 
merly abundant have become rare, — so 
rare as to have caused an unjust suspi- 
cion, of their not being really natives, 
to arise in the minds of some modern 
botanists.” 
We fear that this will some day be 
the fate of Seseli Libanotis, which grows 
at present “ in old chalk-pits, and by 
hedge-rows on both sides of the road 
from Hinton to the Gograagog Hills.” 
On the Continent this plant furnishes 
two speeies of the genus Depressana, 
only one of which {Libanoti della) has 
yet occurred here ; D. Hofmanni would 
