ISO Mr. Winch o?i the indigenous Plants [Aug. 



hardening and maturing the buds enveloping the flowers in 

 embryo ; but more especially to the want of a continuance of 

 sufficient heat during the summer to bring the fruit to perfection 

 which occasionally is formed ; for all these trees withstand the 

 winter frosts tolerably well in sheltered situations. The vine 

 seldom flowers ; and if by chance small grapes are produced, 

 they soon drop off. The fig is seldom seen out of the hot-house, 

 and is always barren. The quince and medlar flower freely ; 

 but their fruit never ripen ; and the same observation holds good 

 with regard to the walnut and chestnut : even the filbert bears 

 very sparingly. The mulberry is here a low stunted tree ; but 

 in favourable summers bears abundance of small fruit, which 

 partly ripen, and are well flavoured. 



On traversing the wild and extensive moors of Durham, Cum- 

 berland, and the south of Northumberland, an interesting pheno- 

 menon presents itself in numerous places. There the surface has 

 been cast into equal ridges by the plough, though the land is 

 now covered by heath ; and agriculture has formerly flourished 

 in situations so elevated as to preclude the possibility of obtain- 

 ing com crops from them at the present day. Record and 

 tradition are alike silent respecting the era when, and the people 

 by whom, these districts were subjected to tillage ; nor has any 

 probable conjecture been started to throw light on this curious 

 subject. The most considerable elevation above the level of the 

 sea at which wheat is now cultivated does not exceed 1000 feet. 

 Oats grow at nearly double that height; but in unfavourable 

 years, the sheaves may frequently be seen standing among the 

 snow, which not uncommonly covers the tops of the mountains- 

 in October, and is never later in falling than the middle of 

 November. The stations of barley and rye are between those of 

 the wheat and oats, but big, a more hardy grain than either 

 of the former, is no longer cultivated. 



Turnips, but of a small size, and potatoes, grow at the same 

 height as oats ; and these moors, when newly broken up, yield 

 a good crop of rape. On the soil being turned over for the first 

 time, and lime applied, these lands produce white clover (trifolium 

 repens) in abundance — a circumstance in no way satisfactorily 

 accounted for, but which is known to take place on wastes both 

 in Britain and North America (see Pursh's Flora Americana, 

 ii. 477), and probably in most other temperate regions. The 

 white or opium poppy, which is cultivated on a large scale in 

 Flanders, and the tobacco, which is to be met with in most parts of 

 Sweden, are here known only as ornaments to the flower garden. 

 The plants which seem designed by nature to bind the loose 

 gands of the sea shore in the north of Europe by their creeping 

 roots, or rather stolones, are the means of forming low round- 

 topped hills, called links, along a considerable part of these 

 •eoasts. Those whose localities are confined to the beach are 

 triticum loliaceum, the sea-wheat grass, arundo arenaria, sea- 

 mat .grass; elymus arenarius, sand lyme grass; festuca giauca, 



