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or two stations nearer Bath. Some of these last might certainly 

 have been planted ; but taking them in connection with the large 

 numbers that we had passed on different parts of the line since 

 leaving Bournemouth, it seemed to myself as if there must have 

 been originally one continuous growth of firs the whole way ; and 

 the question occurred to me — Did the firs ever reach to 

 Bath itself? A.nd then I remembered a few old scattered, 

 scraggy, forlorn-looking firs growing on Combe Down when I 

 first came into this neighbourhood five and thirty years ago. 

 These firs had always been a puzzle to me. Who planted them 

 there ? supposing them to have been planted. Who cared to 

 set them on a sort of no man's land, or if not so, strictly speaking — 

 on an open down, where persons wander at wiU, and the trees are 

 subjected to the rough usage of every passer by ? No doubt the 

 trees had a history once, but they looked, when I last saw them, 

 as if awaiting extinction, — life's day all but run out. May there 

 not have been more firs once, and in full vigour ? And is it not 

 possible they may have had some connection, I do not say with 

 the Bournemouth firs, but with a large growth of firs existing 

 ages back over all the downs by which Bath is surrounded, and 

 as truly plentiful and indigenous in those days as in Bourne- 

 mouth itself, or any other part of Great Britain ? The 

 Combe Down trees, in that case, must have had a long 

 ancestry, and they alone survive to tell the tale of the 

 past, reminding one of the solitary firs on Lymington 

 Heath above spoken of. There is something of sadness felt 

 on hearing of things in which we take an interest being 

 found or seen for the last time. The botanist mourns for the 

 loss of some rare plant no longer to be met with in spots where 

 he used to gather it. And the tree as well as the flower may 

 evoke a feeling of this kind ; or steps may be taken, as they have 

 been taken in some cases, to preserve a few individuals still 

 remaining. The rare and beautiful Ladies' Slipper Orchis, 

 formerly met with in many places in the north, is now, I believe, 



