Societies and Academies

Abstract

LEEDSNaturalists' Field Club and Scientific Association, September 15.—Mr. Henry Pocklington, F.R.M.S., in the chair.—Mr. James Abbott exhibited a number of interesting plants collected in the West Riding, including Potentilla norvegica, which grows abundantly on the banks of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal between Armley and Kirkstall, and appears to have been thoroughly naturalised. It was first gathered about 1860, by Mr. Wm. Kirkley, but not satisfactorily determined at the time. In 1868 it was found, also apparently native, in Burwell Fen, Cambridgeshire, by Mr. G. S. Gibson, and recorded by him in the Journal of Botany for that year (vol. vi., p. 302; also see “Babington's Manual,” seventh edition). In 1874 Mr. Abbott noticed it in great abundance, and in 1875 it was sent to Kew to be named. It turned out to be a Scandinavian form, though in what manner it reached the Leeds district is as yet unaccounted for. Mr. C. P. Hobkirk, of Huddersfield, reports that it grows on the canal banks in his neighbourhood, where he found it in 1873. Mr. Abbott also reported the capture of the Clouded Yellow Butterfly (Colias edusa) near Adel Dam, six miles north of Leeds, on the 5th September. This ordinarily southern form seems this year to have extended its range far to the northward. Vanessa antiopa, also recorded from Kirkstall Road, Leeds, in September.