The Presidential Address.
23
stances would lead me to attribute its origin to the mediaeval
garden. It may be doubted whether before the days of weirs
and mill-dams any exact analogue of its favourite habitat
existed, and no doubt the other denizens of those meadows
which are now the glory of English landscape, the buttercups
and daisies, must before the days of agriculture have been
far less general.
Coming to the plants of the estuaries and the low cliffs
from Harwich to Southend the changes during the human
period have been mainly due to the natural encroachment of
the sea, and probably the Marsh Mallow (Althaea officinalis),
the Fennel,32 the Sea-holly (Eryngium),33 and the wild Cab-
bage (Brassica oleracea)34 flourished there, then as now.
Besides the plants to which I have alluded, I may mention
the Mulleins (Verbascum thapsus and V. nigrum), Scorpion-
grasses (Myosotis) and Mallows (Malva) of our waste spots,
our rare Essex Hare's-ear (Bupleurum falcatum), at Ongar,
the Earth-nut (Bunium flexuosum), of which we read as the
food of the Caledonians in the 3rd century a.d.,35 the para-
sitic Mistletoe,36 and perhaps the Soapwort (Saponaria) and
the Gooseberry (Grossularia), as indigenous. The Soapwort
32 "In the inland localities it has probably only escaped from cultiva-
tion, but appears truly indigenous on the cliffs at Southend, if not else-
where along the Thames."—Gibson, 'Flora of Essex,' p. 138. "Me
parait indigene en Angleterre, comme sur le continent voisin, malgre le
doute de M. Watson ('Cybele Britannica,' vol. i., p. 447)."—DeCandolle,
op. cit., p. 667.
33 "At Landamer lading, at Harwich, ..."Gerard, 'Herball' (1597),
p. 1000. "Colchester is noted for the first inventing or practising the
candying or conditing of its roots, the manner whereof may be seen in
Gerard's Herbal."—Ray, in Gibson's Camden's 'Britannia.'
34 "Je ne vois pas pourquoi il n'aurait pas ete spontane, avant l'homme,
en quelques points de l'Angleterre, puisque sa patrie doit etre, d'apres
divers indices linguistiques, l'Europe occidentale temperee, et qu'on le
trouve sur des falaises en Angleterre et en Irlande."—DeCandolle, op. cit.,
p. 653.
35 'The Scottish Gael,' by James Logan, vol. ii., p. 113. Dion Cassius,
lib. lxxvi., cap. 12.
36 "I never sawe more plentye of righte oke miscel, then Hugh Morgan
shewed me in London. It was sente to hym oute of Essex: where as
there is more plentye then in anye other place of Englande that I have
ben in."—Turner, 'Herbal' (1568), lib. ii., p. 165,