ALNUS IXCANA 
117 
fairly normal leaf 8 cm. by 6 cm. as compared with G’G cm. by 
5'2 cm., and they are, as are the Hitchin plants, much less tomentose 
below, and ultimately ashy green beneath. They are also more acute 
or even acuminate. Prof. Holmboe notes that densely tomentose as 
well as quite glabrous leaves are met with in Norway. 
The leaves of the Hitchin bushes were many of them in 1921 
infested with a gall, identified by Mr. E. W. Swanton as caused by 
Eriophyes brevitarsus Nal. Mature leaves of sheets in the European 
Herbarium of the British Museum show the same leaf-gall. The 
native alder in ‘ The Folly ’ was free from it, although attacked by 
another mite, E. leevis Nal. (jide F. Hansom). But in L922, in the 
King’s Marsh, Wolferton, I found A. glutinosa f. maeroearpa 
Fedde strongly attacked by E. brevitarsus. 
The alder swamp near ‘The Folly,’ Hitchin, was until recently 
owned by Mr. M. H. Foster, of Wymondley, and had been for a long 
while the property of his family. Mr. Foster cannot recall any 
planting of A. ineana known to him during the last sixty years, 
so that if the bushes were originally planted, it is likely to have been 
very long ago. For timber purposes one would judge a bush that 
matures at twelve feet, and yields only quickly tapering poles at best, 
as distinctly inferior to the native alder, so that a reason for their 
occurrence has yet to be discovered. I cannot help thinking, how¬ 
ever, that their origin may conceivably be due to the introduction of 
seed by such birds as snipe, which frequently visit the spot. 
Prof. F. W. Oliver has planted A. ineana in his small experi¬ 
mental enclosure on the sand-dunes at Blakeney Point, Norfolk, 
where I saw it last summer. 
Alnns ineana is also reported from the following stations (pro¬ 
bably by no means the only ones where it occurs) :— 
Ireland. “ On Lord Castletown’s estate at Doneraile, Co. Cork, 
there is a wood partly composed of Grey Alder which has covered the 
ground with its suckers ” (A. B. Jackson, in litt. Aug. 6, 1922). 
Cumberland (jide Hr. G. C. Bruce). 
Westmorland. Several trees, one of which flowers very early, in 
January or February, at Arnside. Sheets gathered by T. Cuckney 
were distributed tlirouo'li the Watson Club in 1922 by W. H. 
O «• 
Pearsall. 
Lake Lancashire. “In the middle of Roudsea Wood, in a 
boggy depression, with SjAiaynum and Juncus. It certainly had not 
been planted there as a wind-screen, if at all. Roudsea Wood and 
all the magnificent peat-bogs—The ‘ Mosses ’—between it and Hol- 
ker Hall form part of the Holker Estate (Lord Richard Cavendish).” 
(W. H. Pearsall, in litt.) 
