428 



heat, the buzz of some insect in his joyous flight, or the throb of 

 the paddles as some distant steamer passes down along the yellow 

 sea. What a glorious view too stretclies away on either hand ! 

 The anticlinal ridge of the Meudip Hills in the hazy distance to 

 the N E., with the rich alluvial and New red sandstone plain inter- 

 vening, hiding we know not what secrets beneath its tantalising 

 covering ; the busy town of Bridgwater just where the plain begins 

 to swell into the Quantocks, only distinguishable by its veil of thin 

 smoke, thus not intruding the officiousness of its bustling life to 

 mar the tranquil beauty of the scene. Church tower aud farmhouse 

 dotted here and there in the woodland below ; and then in front 

 that yellow expanse of water, looking rich and golden in the sunlight, 

 with the distant mountains of Wales forming a fitting background ! 

 I said it was impossible to help running over all this in thought, 

 but I must remember that some dry facts of geology are my theme, 

 not however forgetful that it is after all these dry geological facts 

 that are the' cause of this digi'ession ; for without the formative 

 process of these facts, cutting and carving out the physical features 

 around, this scenery would not have existed to have called forth 

 the admiration of its worshipper. 



Well, it was amid this " cheerful beanty" * (as a friend happily 

 charactei-ises the Quantock scenery), that I was spending a few days 



• " The chief characteristic of the Quantock scenery I venture to designate 

 as cheerful beauty. TJnlike the savage grandeur of the Scottish mountains, or 

 the wild and bloak uplands of Northern England, its heath-clad summits rise 

 in gentle and gracefid undulations, and sink into woody ' coombs ' of the most 

 romantic beauty, each with its own little stream -winding through its slopes, 

 fringed with ferns of luxurious growth, or purple with heather, and abound- 

 ing with the dwarf oak and the whortleberry, the fruit of which last shrub 

 known locally as ' whorts ' becomes from its sale a source of considerable 

 profit to the surrounding villages. These numerous coombs, in the sheltered 

 hollows of which may be found some of the rarest of our native plants, form 

 perhaps the most marked feature of the district, and lying, as they generally 

 do, at right angles to the sea-shore, break the outline of the mountain range 

 into ' heads ' as they are locally termed, and these eminences, seen from the 

 Bristol Channel, gave rise in days of yore to their Keltic name of the 

 Quantocks, i.e., 'the water headlands.' "— ' The Quantocks, with some reminis- 

 cences of Wordsworth and Coleridge,' read before The Bath Literary Club, by Rev. 

 W. L. Nichols, M.A. 



