QUERIES IN LOCAL TOPOGRAPHICAL BOTANY. 265 
Mr. Bobart I am not perfect master of, and should be glad of 
information about some of them, in order to a new edition of Mr. 
Kay's Synopsis." 
Mr. Moyle replying, says, " I communicated your letter to my 
good friend and neighbour Mr. Stephens, who is still alive and 
hearty. He desired me to present you his humble service, and to 
assure you that he will very soon send you a complete collection of 
all the submarina plants in Cornwall which he knows, and that 
you may command his service in anything." In another letter of 
Moyle's to Sherard he speaks of an intention of Stephens's to go 
to "Loo Island to get Tuci' for him." This Rev. Lewis Stephens 
was the father of the Rev. Wm. Stephens, Vicar of St. Andrew's 
Church, Plymouth, from October 1723 to 1731, a man of consider- 
able learning and an author. Boase and Courtney inform us, in the 
Bibliotlieca Cornubiensis, that the father drew up an account or list 
of " Rare plants in the county of Cornwall, MS. not now known." 
Residing at Menheniot, he would be near spots where the Physo- 
spermum still grows, though I know of no actual record of it for 
that parish. I have, however, myself seen it in plenty in some 
parts of the adjoining one on the east, Quethiock. After Stephens's 
discovery of it, which of course added it to the British list, no one 
seems to have gathered it for a long period of years, and the 
precise locality where he found it becoming forgotten, Pulteney, 
writing about half a century afterwards, noted down the plant as 
" lost." In Withering's Botanical Arrangement of British Plants, 
ed. 2 of the date 1787, we find the following statement by Dr. 
Stokes : " Only one specimen is known to exist. It has been 
searched for in vain by many industrious botanists, which has 
induced some to believe that it is now extinct." (Vol. i. p. 290.) In the 
following year, however, it was rediscovered ; for we have Sir James, 
then Dr. Smith writing of it as follows : " Grows in thickets and 
hedges in Cornwall. This very rare plant was first found, since the 
days of Buddie, by Mr. Pennington in 1788. I am obliged to my 
very good friend Sir Thos. Cullum, Bart., for a specimen gathered 
by himself near Bodmin in that county in 1789, from which, 
assisted by a living specimen communicated from the garden of the 
British Museum by Mr. Dickson, the present figure has been 
delineated." The reference here is to Icones Picta PI. Rarior. 
(fas. 2, table ii. 1790-93). The figure is a beautiful folio one. 
Writing again of it in 1800 for English Botany, Smith ex- 
