62 



be pleased with the loveliness of the scenery ; its richness, its wilJness, the rugged 



banks, and the rushing river, the beautiful combination of rook and foliage, of 



light and shadow, as seen, now from the gloom of a rocky cavern, and again from 



an open glade. 'WeU might a lover of the picturesque grow more and more 



enchanted with the views. Well miglit Mr. llichard Payne Knight dwell on them 



with enthusiasm. 



" Let me, retir'd from Inisiiiess, toil and strife. 

 Close amidst books and solitude, my life : 

 Beneatli yon high-brow'd rucks in tliicket rove. 

 Or, meditating, wander througli the grove ; 

 Or from the cavern view the mo.intide beam 

 Dance on the rippling of the hicid stream. 

 While the wild wiic^dLiiie dangles o'er my head. 

 And various flowers around their fragrance spread ; 

 Or, where, 'midst scatter'd trees, the op'ning glade 

 Admits the well mixt tints of liglit and shade." 



' ' There is nothing to be done in bees here, " said an entomologist present, who 



had perseveriugly waved his net throughout the day, so I am afraid in the matter 



of " fragi-ant flowers" the poet has taken a little license in the description. For 



ferns and mosses the i^lace is renowned : they abound here. Few visitors seemed 



to be aw.are of the moss cavern below the grotto, where the liverwort, Marchantia 



jwlymorpha, spreads its broad leaves over the damp rocks, amidst mosses of many 



kinds. The majority of the ladies chose fern-liuntuig. Tire delicate oak fern, 



Polypodivm dnjoptcris, abounds here, and many were the roots canicd off. The 



Cistoptcris fraijilis, the brittle fern, in its ordinary form, and in the variety dcntata, 



was found pretty freely. The pretty and graceful shield ferns, PoIiisUchum acu- 



hatuni, in its variety lobatum, and Polystichimi anr/idarc, were eagerly welcon^ed 



by the fair botanists, and others were plentiful enough ; and so, too, was the 



Maidenhair Spleenwort, Asplcniimi Trichimumes. One lady liad sot her heart on 



a lady fern, Athyrium FiUx-fiemina, and as a fine specimen was given to her, she 



evidently thought with Calder Campbell— 



" But not by burn, in wood, or dale, 

 Grows anything so fair 

 As the ijlumy crest of the emerald pale, 

 That waves in the wind, or soughs in the gale, 

 Of the Lady fern when the sunbeams turn 

 To gold her delicate hair." 



IMany other more ordinary ferns were there — the Aaplcniuni Adiantunl 

 nigrum, and A. Ruta muraria, the BlecJmum horeale, the Pol iqwdi if, a vuh/ore, the 

 handsome Hart's Tongue, Scolopcndrium vulgare, the sweet-scented mountain fern, 

 iMStnea Orcnpteris, the L. dilatata, the ever-abounding LastroM FlUx-mns, and the 

 common brake, Ptcris aquiliaa. And about them all there was the great pleasure 

 and advantage that take freely as you might, the permission to take may still 

 generously be yielded, for a single season will amply fill again the vacancies. 



Some of the votaries of science looked for grasses, the word melick grass, 

 Melica uniflora, the Aira ca'spitosa, and the Festuca sylvatim made very elegant 

 bunches, and the Rev. TV. H. Purchas was very charmed with the discovery of the 

 siireaiUng millet-grass, Milium cffusum, which lie thought new to the county, and 

 therefore a prize of the day, albeit it is not a very uncommon grass. 



