QUERIES IN LOCAL TOPOGRAPHICAL BOTANY. 261 
Chcerophyllum Anthriscus seems sparsely and irregularly dotted 
about Devon and Cornwall, with a submaritime tendency, though 
found at Trusham, miles from salt water, like Lotus angustissimus. 
The leaves of Crithmum maritimum, L., the Samphire, are well 
known to have been used for pickling so long ago as 300 years. 
We have England's great dramatist, in one of his most celebrated 
works, bearing witness to the fact of their being in his time what 
the utilitarians of our own would call a marketable article. Cir- 
cumstances, however, required his Samphire gatherer to be introduced 
carrying on his " dreadful trade " on the white cliffs of Dover, 
not on the red or blue cliffs of Devon or Cornwall. Are there any 
records of this plant having ever been collected to any great extent 
for edible purposes in our two counties? I am not aware of its 
being used anywhere here at present, but it is quite possible it may 
be in some parts. 
By means of the Carrot, Daucus Carota, L., and Parsnip, Pasti- 
naca sativa, L., we may form some estimate of the power of arti- 
ficial conditions and methodical selection to change the appearance 
and size of plants after a cultivation of one or two thousand years, 
or more than two thousand for the former. Of these species we 
have what are undoubtedly both the mild states and the forms 
obtained after and by means of this long process of cultivation : 
the former in our pastures and by roadsides * the latter in our 
gardens. In the case of some plants comparisons between the wild 
and the cidtivated states, or what seem the latter, are unsatisfactory 
from a difficulty of ascertaining distinctly what are truly wild ex- 
amples apart from degenerated and semi-wild descendants of culti- 
vated ones. The Carrot species, besides showing us the variations 
that have arisen in cultivation, and have accumulated through a 
long process of artificial selection, brings before us other variations 
seemingly naturally induced by, or developed under, maritime con- 
ditions, and these in some individual plants of so marked a charac- 
ter as to make them constitute a variety — the a. gummifer of 
London Catalogue, ed. 7, or D. maritimus of some authors. 
This was pronounced surely a species by Withering and Smith, and 
is still so considered by Professor Babington, as we may see by 
turning to the last edition of his well-known Manual. The 
younger Withering, in the seventh edition of his father's Arrange- 
ment of British Plants, calls it " Cornish Coast Carrot/' and says, 
" Dr. Withering first gathered this plant on the western coast of 
