A BOTANICAL TOUR IN HEREFORDSHIRE, MONMOUTHSHIRE, 
AND SOUTH WALES; 
II 
WITH INCIDENTAL NOTICES OF THE SCENERY, ANTIQUITIES, &C. 
By Edwin Lees, F.L.S. & F.E.S.L. 
Any observations that may tend more completely to elucidate the Botany of Great 
Britain, and accumulate materials for a correct geographical distribution of its plants, 
cannot but be regarded with interest by the inquisitive Naturalist, as additional 
links in the scientific chain. This applies, too, more particularly to the district I 
have just cursorily examined, which appears most unaccountably to have been 
greatly neglected by botanical observers, if we except Mr. Dillwyn, who, in the 
first edition of the Botanist's Guide through England and Wales , has recorded 
the stations of many plants in Glamorganshire. Respecting the vegetation of the 
other South Welch counties, little seems to be known ; for my friend, Mr. Hew- 
ett Cottrell Watson, in his recent and excellent New Botanist's Guide to the 
Localities of the rarer Plants of Britain , has left Radnorshire an entire blank ; 
stating that the Old Botanist's Guide contained localities for three cryptogamic 
plants only in that county, and that “ not any other stations” were known to him. 
And while he has only given thirteen plants to Monmouthshire, four of which 
were communicated by myself, he remarks, under Pembrokeshire—“ For this and 
other counties of South Wales, I have to regret the very incomplete lists it is in 
my power to give. Indeed, there is, probably, no other part of Britain, in which 
half-a-dozen counties together are so little known hotanically. It is much to be 
wished that some botanical tourist would diligently explore them.” This, I think, 
must be allowed to furnish me with a very sufficient text for illustration and re¬ 
mark ; and having occasion for a little mental and bodily renovation, I resolved 
that while I inhaled the sea breezes on the one hand, I would, if possible, scent out 
some plants on the other. 
Now, then, for the detail of operations. I will first, however, mention, that, 
to prevent trouble and render my researches more accessible, when any plant 
noticed by me is unrecorded by Mr. Cottrell Watson, as located in that vicinity, I 
shall prefix an asterisk to it. 
I entered Herefordshire by the pass through the sienitic chain of Malvern 
Hills, at the northern base of the massive serrated Herefordshire Beacon. Having 
before, in Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History , vol. iii., in Hastings’s Illus¬ 
trations of the Natural History of Worcestershire , and in Mr. Watson’s New 
Botanist's Guide , detailed all the plants of the Malvern Hills that I was ac¬ 
quainted with, I here refer to those publications for the Malvern plants, and 
hasten upon new ground. As a lover of justice to fellow-labourers in the same 
vol. i. 2 e 
