360 WILD FLOWEES OP 



space about twenty yards in length. As the village 

 of Braunton is itself three miles off, a field botanist 

 not guided to the spot, might make many a ramble on 

 the northern side of the Burrows, and about the cen- 

 tral sandhills, without any attendant success. Braun- 

 ton Burrows is a fine storehouse for a wandering 

 botanist, with a glorious prospect on all sides. Other 

 rare plants are allocated here, as Viola Curtisii, 

 (Enanihe pimpinelloides, (E. silaifolia, Bartsia viscosa, 

 and patches of the beautiful silvery-leaved dwarf 

 Willow, Salioo argentea. 



Summer ! ah, where has summer been this year ? 

 is often a common exclamation at its close, for in 

 ungenial years scarcely have we been able to obtain a 

 glimpse of it, before it is already perceived waning 

 away. Pine or wet, the flowers spring and fade, and 

 the profusion of composite or syngenesious ones now 

 perceptible, gives serious warning that the summer is 

 declining and the days shortening. On the river side 

 the Tansy (Tanacetum vulgar e)* spreads its golden 

 disc, gilding the bank; the specious-rayed Hawkweeds 



* The golden yellow discs of the Tansj, though without rays, from their 

 thick clusters give a gorgeous appearance to the river banks, where they con- 

 gregate characteristic of advanced summer, and the impending close of floral 

 glories. This old English plant noted for its strong and bitter yet not unplea- 

 sant scent, marks the change from the good old times when our great grand- 

 mothers made their own confectionary, looked to their housewifery as a 

 morning amusement, spun their own sheeting, and knew more of the wholesome 

 virtues of herbs than the toll-loll of a piano or the merits of the last new novel. 

 Tansy Pudding was then an established dish, and ADDISON thus makes Sir 

 ROGER DE COVERLET mention it in connection with the sweet widow whose 

 charms had entrapped the guileless old knight. " You must know I dined with 

 her at a public table the day after I first saw her, and she helped me to some 

 Tansy in the eye of all the gentlemen in the country." But public tables 

 are now abandoned, as far as ladies are concerned balls commence at nine 

 o'clock, when our ancestors used to be abed and asleep, and Tansy Pudding, 

 as being too homely a condiment, has gone out of fashion, almost as forgotten 

 as the spinning-wheel. 



