REVIEWS. 3 



of Marychurch was selected for his temporary residence, where, with his 

 favourite text-books and microscope, our author soon prepared to make 

 acquaintance with its coves and inlets, their dark pools and hollows, their 

 sea-weeds and zoophytes. But we must give a description of a " Devon- 

 shire Lane," as it appeared in the end of January, 1852 : — 



" No frosts had as yet sullied the verdure of the hedge banks, or nipped the shrubs 

 in the sweet cottage gardens. Indeed, frost seems here almost unknown, if we may- 

 judge by the myrtles, dressed in their glossy foliage of deepest green, reaching up to 

 the eaves of the houses, and the fuchsias, not always of the most common varieties, 

 whose thick, roughened trunks have evidently braved the open air through many 

 winters. The high, sloping banks were everywhere fringed with the long, pendent 

 fronds of the hartstongue fern, the broad, arrowy leaves of the wake-robin, glossy and 

 black spotted, and great tufts of the fetid iris, a rare plant elsewhere, were springing 

 up from all the ditches. Strange, warm, damp lanes, winding and turning about, 

 ever opening into some other lane, that again presenting into another, and all ap- 

 parently leading no where, with the little birds hopping fearlessly about the hedge- 

 tops and trees overhead, the robin sweetly singing, the tiny gold crest peeping into 

 crevices of the ivy, the yellowhammer and the chaffinch in their gay plumage 

 twittering almost within reach of your hand ! And ever and anon we pass some 

 thatched cottage in the sheltered bottom, its little garden in front trimly kept, and 

 still bright with the blossoms of the chrysanthemums, the trailing roses over the 

 porch, displaying a lingering flower or two, and the indispensable myrtle peeping in 

 at the chamber lattice *****. Early violets were beginning to peep from 

 their lowly retreats, and very soon we found them in plenty, and the delicate, pale, 

 yellow primroses bespangled every bank." 



Such a description we would gladly linger over ; but, in justice to our 

 readers, we must pass on to some more of those living pictures, lovely alike 

 to the eye and heart, with which Mr. Gosse's pages overflow. It is not 

 only when describing the lovely lane scenery that Mr. Gosse waxes elo- 

 quent — there flows all through his book the same keen appreciation of the 

 beautiful — the same power of, as it were, identifying his own feelings with 

 those of his readers, and transporting them to the visions of beauty he loves 

 to describe. 



Look, what a picture for the naturalist, this description of the Rock-pool, 

 at Oddicombe, presents : — 



" It is a deep, oval, cup-like cavity, about a yard wide in the longest diameter, 

 and of the same depth, hewn out, as it were, from the solid limestone, with as clean a 

 surface as if a stone mason had been at work there. It is always full of water, and, 

 except when a heavy sea is rolling in, of brilliant clearness. All round the margin 

 are growing tufts of the common coralline, forming a whitish, bushy fringe, reaching 

 from the edge to about six inches down ; a few plants of the bladder Fucus are 

 scattered around and above the brim, and the arching fronds of the sweet Laminaria 

 hang down nearly to the bottom, closely resembling, except in their deep, brown hue, 

 the hartstongue fern, that so profusely adorns the sides of our green lanes. Below 

 the coralline level are a few small, red sea- weeds, as Rhodymenia palmata ; and the 

 dark, purple Chondruscrispus growingin rich tufts, reflecting a steel-blue irridescence. 

 But all the lower parts of the sides and bottom are almost quite free from sea-weeds, 

 with the exception of a small Ulva or two, and a few encrusting patches of the coral- 

 line not yet shot up into branches, but resembling smooth pink lichens. The 

 smooth surface of the rock in these lower parts is quite clean, so that there is nothing 

 to intercept the sight of the Actinia that project from the hollows, and spread out 



