[TO THE EDITOR OF TUE "SPECTATOR. "] am uncertain if the
disappearance your correspondent Oxoniensis (Spectator, July 27th) deplores of the " Grass of Parnassus" is absolute or only from the "turf moors at sea- level "; as, however, the writer of the article in the same issue takes it that the plant has been wiped out of exist- ence, may I say that I think it possible that this is the flower named to me by an old governess as Grassus Parnassus. And if this be so the " Grass of Parnassus " still stars damp, grassy spots in the Northumbrian Cheviots and the Inverness- shire Highlands,—I have known it in Ross-shire. The flower I speak of is a white cup, veined by a delicate green tracery, upheld on a straight, slender, almost grass-like stem, and con- taining a circle of peculiarly velvety, pale green stamens,— one of the most exquisite of its kind, and growing as it does in these desert places, one of the most etherial looking. I can hardly venture to think that the Allium sphaerocephalum that your correspondent mentions as growing only on the St. Vincent Rocks, " as far as Great Britain is concerned," can indeed be the same flowering garlic that grows in two woods within a few miles of the Border town of Alnwick, and that I have hesitated to walk among because of its strong, pungent
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