AUGUST. 335 



little Vernal Squill (Scilla verna) lifts its scape three 

 or four inches high, sustaining a small corymb of deep 

 blue fragrant flowers, but getting into seed at this 

 late period. 



To^ the beetling rock succeeds (as is often the case 

 on the Welsh coast) a waste of yellow sand, stretch- 

 ing far across the borders of the sea ; often lifted into 

 hills and rampires, matted and bound into consistence 

 by the fibrous roots of the Sea Lyme Grass (Elymus 

 arenarius), and the Sea Seed (AmmopJiila arundinacea), 

 and in places depressed into huge hollows and deep 

 ravines smooth, soft, and delightful to the tread, 

 where no sound but the distant murmur of the billows 

 at this time enters. But these sands are not waste 

 and devoid of vegetation as the horrid deserts of 

 Sahara ; they glow with vegetative beauty, now deve- 

 loped to its utmost brightness, as if to soothe and 

 cheer the wanderer who pants for the renovation of 

 the enlivening sea-breeze. Here the artist might not 

 vainly study the bright tints of nature's contrasts; in 

 one place islets of Thyme, of the richest purple, mantle 

 over the sand in others brilliant spots of yellow are 

 formed by the clustering flowers of the Bird's-foot 

 Trefoil {Lotus corniculatus), while masses of primrose 

 tints mark the social domicile of the Sea Chickweed 

 (Arenaria peploides). "Within reach of the bitter spray 

 of the tide, wherever the rolling pebbles have been 

 chafed by the surges, the Yellow Horned Poppy (Glau- 

 cium luteum) quivers her specious though fugacious 

 petals, that soon strew the shore, quickly succeeded by 

 that curious long curved seed vessel, nearly a foot in 

 length, to which the colloquial appellation of horn has 

 been given ; close by her side the Prickly Saltwort 



