SEPTEMBEE. 399 



slippery stones, I had some difficulty in escaping from 

 the humid bed where the mountain sylphs seemed 

 anxious to detain me, and it was late in the night ere 

 I reached Pont B-hynvendigad. 



But .the earnest botanical explorator imbibes the 

 mountain dew uncomplainingly, the thought of floral 

 beauties among deep solitudes and broken fells dwells 

 upon his imagination, wander he must, and like a 

 vapour that the sun calls upward, he darts off from 

 murky streets and dingy habitations to the solicitous 

 haunts and purifying heights where his favourites 

 grow. 



" Climb with me the steep 



Nature's observatory whence the dell 

 In flowery slopes, its river's chrystal swell, 

 May seem a span ; let me thy vigils keep 

 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap 

 Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell." * 



Let us then illustrate the joys of a botanical look-out 

 in a cursory plunge among the dark moors and sullen 

 tumps of the Berwyn mountains. Here all is silent, 

 waste, and uninhabited, nothing visible but the black 



' ' O 



wide spread Heath,f and the blacker stacks of 

 "Mown" or turf, on the mountain side. Cairns crown 

 each round eminence, and one looms behind the other 

 so twin-like that in a fog it would be impossible to 

 distinguish one from the other, and what a desolate 

 position this must be with a keen pityless sleet- 



* KEATS. 



t LINN^US remarks in his Flora Lapponica, that in some of the districts 

 through which he passed in Lapland scarce any plant was to be seen hut the 

 heath, which everywhere covered the ground, and could no ways be extir- 

 pated. The country people, he observes, had an idea that there were two 

 plants which would finally overspread and destroy the whole earth, viz. 

 Heath and Tobacco. But it is probable there will be always smokers 

 enough to consume the last plant. 



