THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 29 
build their houses, or herbs to feed their cattle, as 
they looked on those wild gardens amid the wreaths 
of the untrodden snow, which had lifted their gay 
flowers to the sun year after year since the foun- 
dation of the world, taking no heed of man, and all 
the coil which he keeps in the valleys far below. 
And even, to take a simpler instance, there are 
those who will excuse, or even approve of, a writer 
for saying that, among the memories of a month’s 
eventful tour, those which stand out as beacon- 
points, those round which all the others group 
themselves, are the first wolf-track by the road-side 
in the Kyllwald; the first sight of the blue and 
green Roller-birds, walking behind the plough like 
rooks in the tobacco-fields of Wittlich; the first 
ball of Olivine scraped out of the volcanic slag- 
heaps of the Dreisser-Weiher; the first pair of 
the Lesser Bustard flushed upon the downs of the 
Mosel-kopf; the first sight of the cloud of white 
Ephemere, fluttering in the dusk like a summer 
snowstorm between us and the black cliffs of 
the Rheinstein, while the broad Rhine beneath 
