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ecstacy of joy, it is that little warbler's note ; bright 

 sea, swift ships, busy shores, he sees it all, praises the 

 Creator, and drops to the side of his mate. Not many 

 steps and we are at the bottom of the hollow : how com- 

 plete the change ! we see in no direction further than a 

 few yards ; the outer world of life is as much excluded 

 as if we were in the depths of the Sahara ; yet within a 

 sandy hollow is a world of life and beauty ; mark how 

 the drooping sea-reed draws about itself a magic circle 

 in the sand ; that falling stream of glittering atoms may 

 give us a lesson in geology : bright GicmdeUdce are 

 basking in the sun : everywhere appears wisdom and 

 animation. Must we except those scattered snail shells 

 that lie strewn upon the sand ? Where all else is seen 

 to have a purpose, they appear only the sjDort of the 

 whirling breeze, symbols of whatever is worn out, cast 

 off, empty and useless. Let us watch them for a moment : 

 notice that golden-haired bee, Osmia aundenta, hovering 

 over them : she alights and disappears ; she has entered 

 a shell, and safely in its whorls has deposited her egg 

 with a store of food for the larva, and on some future day 

 from that bleached shell shall issue the Avinged insect 

 that is to represent whatever of beauty and of excellency 

 the creative thought bestowed upon its species. 



Woods and heaths and lanes are hayjpy places, but to 

 me even they yield less interest than our wild tempest 

 beaten sand hills. 



Two localities upon the coast remain to be noticed, 

 the first of which is the elevated and much broken ground 

 between New Brighton and Wallasey, producing several 

 rare flowering plants, and Batarrea phalloides, a fungus so 

 rare that Mr. Berkeley informs' me the only British speci- 

 men in his possession is the original one from which the 

 plant Avas figured in " Sowerby's English Botany." 



The shore of the Dee, including Hilbre Island, is also 

 10 



