142 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
particularly luxuriant about Plymouth — are economically like De 
Quincey's Canadian wild strawberries, illustrating his logic of 
Political Economy : they have exchange value measureable by cost 
of labour of gathering and fetching, which labour of merely getting 
is here the whole cost of production, instead of, as in most forms 
of wealth, the least part. Virtually these gatherers produce with- 
out land, and certainly without capital, the whole business of their 
productions being merely distribution or cost of carriage, plus the 
cost of wearisome stooping. The watercress is well-known as a 
useful salad, having a pleasant pungent, bitterish taste, and esteemed 
as an anti-scorbutic. As to blackberries, as they fetch in the town 
as high a price as the commoner gooseberries, we may conclude 
either that the rent of the soil where the gooseberry is cultivated 
is low or else that the blackberry is more prized. Primula vulgaris, 
the common primrose, is only mentioned by reason of two facts ; 
first, that many thousands of bunches are sent from here to the 
London market, one person at Devonport having had a contract 
for a million bunches this year ; second, that it is said a living 
plant was carried over to Australia, where it was publicly exhibited 
in one of the large towns, and visited by thousands, so much was 
the memory of the flower cherished by those who had become 
exiles from their native land. 
If we now consider the trees, we see they exist in abundance in 
the neighbourhood of Plymouth. There are woods at Polbathick, 
St. Germans, Cotehele, Warleigh, Butshead, Radford, Plym 
Valley, Saltram, Yealmpton, Cornwood, and Ivybridge; and long 
we may hope will they remain. The richness of the land in the 
South Hams and around Plymouth depends probably greatly on 
the prevalence of the woods and plantations. Woods protect 
orchards and fields. "Trees bordering on rivers, streams, lakes, 
or ponds, also preserve fish, in furnishing branchlets, twigs, and 
decaying vegetation for the numberless grubs, caterpillars, beetles, 
flies, and other insects which live on trees." 
Humboldt, the great traveller and naturalist, summing up his 
observations in favour of the maintenance of woods, says, "The 
clearing of forests, the want of permanent springs, and the 
existence of torrents, are three phenomena closely connected 
together." Sir Richard Temple, reporting to the Government in 
consequence of the famine in India of 1877, laments the continued 
destruction of forests. 
