276 WILD FLOWERS OF 



beautiful Heaths (Erica), wreath the interstices and 

 brow of the precipice. 



Some years since, I purposely journeyed to scale the 

 cliffs of Cheddar, Somersetshire, for the beautiful Pink 

 (Diantkus ccssius,} that adorns the brows of its tre- 

 mendous crags. But I was too late to see it in flower. 

 Still I was well rewarded in the sight of this pass of 

 grandeur which I walked through, while new beauties 

 and new sublimities called for my admiration at every 

 step I took. Ivied rocks, battlemented turrets, totter- 

 ing peaks, and impregnable buttresses rose in stern 

 and frowning pomp before me ; nor could imagination 

 tint a picture exceeded here by the reality, Not un- 

 accompanied by care and anxiety, mourning for the 

 past and prophetically looking to the future with tear- 

 ful glimpse, I yet here paused upon my career. I came 

 only, indeed, to gather a plant, and strayed out of my 

 way to do so; but as I looked up to the tempest-riven 

 crags above me, I seemed to be hurried back to days 

 of old when, perhaps, the sea rolled upon or broke 

 through these lofty rocks. I gazed with awe upon 

 such sublime monuments of past revolutions, and fan- 

 cied the admonition of the Great Supreme warned me 

 to be stedfast and hnmoveable to the assaults of vice, 

 as these time-worn precipices that rose land-marks of 

 his power. 



Every species of Pink is interesting and beautiful, 

 and even rare in the present day, when extended cul- 

 tivation leaves so few wild tracts to the botanist. A 

 pink-strewed hill is now a page of poetry, and I shall 

 not easily forget the interesting aspect of Craig Di- 

 ganwy and Bryn Grosol hills, near Con way, when I saw 

 them, in company with some fair companions in 1849, 



