BOTANY In addition there are a few alien species which I have not been able to verify, although they are probably correctly identified, namely Anemone apennina, Isatis the woad was formerly cultivated about Want- age ; Silene conica, which I have seen as a casual in Oxfordshire at Goring ; S. quinquevulnera, Pyrus germanlca the medlar occurs in a wild state in the Oxfordshire hedges, but very rarely ; Doronicum plantagineum and Polemonium were garden escapes ; Chenopodium Botrys, a mere casual ; and Aristolochia Clematitis the Oxfordshire locality at Godstow is just on the Berkshire border, and the Reading locality has apparently been lost. Among the native species which have become so scarce as to elude my observations are Lythrum Hysoppifolia ; Tordylium maximum ; Crepis fcetida, if indeed this was not mistaken for C. taraxacifolia ; Damasonium Alisma, which is a decreasing species in the Thames province ; Dryopteris Thelypteris^ which may possibly be refound ; and the two club-mosses, Lycopodium clavatum and Selago) are likely to still occur in some portion of the Kennet or Loddon districts. Two plants, Tordylium maximum, which formerly certainly grew near Windsor but probably on the Buckinghamshire side of the Thames only, and is not now to be found there or in its Berkshire locality near Frilford, and the monkey orchid (Orchis Simia) may be put in the category of extinct species, and it is most sincerely to be hoped that the list of extinctions will not be enlarged in the immediate future. A few statistics on the comparative distribution of the Berkshire plants in Great Britain may not be unwelcome. Mr. H. C. Watson in the first edition of Topographical Botany (ii. 665-710) gives a comitial census of British plants which shows in a tabular form their comparative distribution. It must be borne in mind that the census numbers there given are now much too small, as many additions have been made since the publication of that work. It must also not be overlooked that these census numbers, while useful to show the distribution of a species through Britain, give no idea of the relative frequency of the species ; but adopting the list of species there given, with the specific limitations as made by Mr. Watson, we find that Of the 368 species, which in that work are stated to be found in from 80 to 110 counties and vice-counties of Great Britain, all occur in Berkshire. Of the 127 species found in from 70 to 80 counties and vice-counties, two inland species, Sparganium natans and Eriophorum vaginatum, are not actually known to grow in Berkshire, but Dr. Eyre de Crespigny in the London Flora has stated that the latter occurs at Sunningwell, and a renewed search may possibly put its occurrence in our county beyond doubt. Of the 1 17 species recorded as occurring in from 60 to 70 counties, Berkshire has 108, the four missing inland species being Empetrum nigrum, Cystopteris fragilis, Polypodium Dryopteris (Phegopteris Dryopteris) (which occurs in woods on the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Chil- terns, may yet be found), and Cbrysosplenium alternifolium. The five 1 33 5
