1861.] BURNHAM BEECHES. 171 



moor, there grow plenty of Rhyncospora banal, Drosera rotun.di- 

 folia, Scutellaria minor, and several other more common plants. 

 Malaxis paludosa, a plant which your correspondent wanted to 

 ~ see, but did not, may be there for all that. The ground is boggy 

 enough, and there is plenty of Sphagnum to line its nest withal. 



Where the chaos of mountains and precipices may be, about 

 which Gray wrote so pleasantly to his friend Horace Walpole^ 

 the narrator would very much like to be told. He could not 

 perceive any elevation half so high as the clouds in a fair day, 

 nor anything like a precipice half so fearful as Shakspeare's 

 Cliif. Hills we found none to climb ; dangerous crags did not 

 tempt us to risk our necks. But there may be steep craggy 

 places at Burnham, though not in our sight ; we were not long 

 there. The venerable Beeches are there still, with their "huge 

 fantastic " roots, and there are other respectable vestiges of the 

 vegetable creation. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel still 

 gambol near the harmless man who is contented with the soli- 

 tude of the scene, or with what grows out of the ground. 



The Londoner who is in quest of a change, i. e. of a scene 

 nearly as unlike as possible to that in which his daily vocation 

 lies, should visit this spot. It is too little praise to tell that it is 

 exactly what it was more than a hundred and twenty years ago, 

 bating tlie poetic embellishments, when the poet described it to 

 his aesthetic friend. This place is exactly what it was hundreds 

 and thousands of years ago. There are no enclosures, no planta- 

 tions, no cultivation nor improvements. This unique place is 

 still a solitary wild spot, its original character unchanged, and 

 its sylvan beauty unimpaired. Long may its leafy honours ap- 

 pear green and glistening in the summer's sun, and long may 

 the heaps of withered and decaying leaves, partially conceal the 

 scarlet fungus which just peeps through the yielding mass ! Long 

 may Burnham Beeches be spared the melancholy fate of Hai- 

 nault Forest ! 



BRITISH OECHIDS. 



To the Editor of the ' Phytologist,' 



Sir, — If you think the accompanying Notes, extracted from 



