595 



and sinking clown under the feet as if compressible, in other parts 

 spongy and overgrown with moss and lichens, but nowhere wet, 

 marshy or boggy. The surface is in some places bare as the sea- 

 beach, but for the most part is overspread with a scanty covering of 

 plants, amongst which Sedum acre is from its abundance especially 

 conspicuous. Two nearly parallel curved valleys, with gently sloping 

 sides formed by the undulating ridges of the dow r n, traverse the war- 

 ren in a direction about north and south for perhaps a mile in length, 

 and like the rest of the tract are perfectly destitute of trees, but stud- 

 ded with patches of stunted thorn and elder, like oases in the general 

 wilderness around. Shade there is none but what these bushes afford, 

 and the verdure when approached is anything but tempting to repose 

 amidst the lurid vegetation of this valley of Hinnom. All the fetid, 

 acrid, venomous and unsightly plants that Britain produces seem con- 

 gregated on this blighted spot, a witch's garden of malevolent and 

 deadly herbs, ready for gathering into her cauldron, which for aught 

 I know may be nightly simmering and seething in this lone spot, as 

 fitting a rendezvous for the powers of darkness on Hallowmas-eve, as 

 their favourite Blocksberg in the Hartz forest, for a Walpurgisnacht 

 commemoration. Beneath and around the clumps of ragged moss- 

 grown elder and hoary stunted whitethorn, the first in some respects 

 itself a " plant of power," meet shelter for the noxious brood it gathers 

 about it, rise thickets of tall nettles and rank hemlock, concealing the 

 deadly but alluring dwale,* the fat dull henbane, the gorgeous fox- 

 glove of life-depressing faculty, the rampant nightshade, gifted with 

 fatal energy in popular imaginings, and one at.least of an uncertain 

 and treacherous race, if free itself from the stain of bloodguiltiness ; 

 whilst scattered over the thriftless soil appear the black mullein [Ver- 

 bascum nigrum) with its lurid leaves, the caustic and grotesque wake- 

 robin, the stinking black horehound (Ballota nigra), and the drastic 

 mandrake [Bryonia dioica, sic Vectice dicta), which trails its gray- 

 green cucumber-like shoots in singular abundance over the naked and 

 stony surface. f The smell on a hot summer's day from such a mul- 

 titude of ill-favoured weeds as these, and more which might be men- 

 tioned, is far from refreshing, and quite overpowers the fragrant 



* Dwale I imagine to come from the Dutch divalen, to err or go astray, — or more 

 immediately perhaps from the obsolete verb to dwaule, to be delirious ; the loss of 

 sense and reason being the most prominent symptom induced by this poison. Mr. 

 Gardiner (' Flora of Forfarshire ') tells us that the fruit is called in Scotland " daft- 

 berries" on the like account; " the insane root, that takes the reason prisoner.'' 



f A decoction of the roots of the Bryony is employed by our cattle leeches in 



