328 EAST ANGLIAN BOTANi'. [November, 



The former was selected, because it affords a greater variety of 

 soils, scenery, etc., and also because it passes through about 

 seventy miles of the county of Norfolk, from Downham to Yar- 

 mouth, by Thetford, Wymondham, and Norwich. 



The valley, or basin of the Lea, as geologists delight to call 

 these alluvial tracts, probably because there is no resemblance 

 between the utensil called a basin and a river-vale, is very pic- 

 turesque, especially on the Epping Forest side. The elevation is 

 far from considerable, not much higher than the ball and cross 

 on St. Paul's, not nearly so high as Shooters' Hill in Kent ; but 

 its slopes are so green, its meadows so fertile, and it is so grace- 

 fully feathered, fringed, and intermixed with rows, plantations, 

 and detached groves of trees, and its eminences are so densely 

 covered and crowned with woodlands, that it constitutes a very 

 admirable English landscape. 



Its fertility is a source of great wealth to the owners and oc- 

 cupiers, and its gentle domestic beauties are sources of much en- 

 joyment to the traveller who has any taste for rural scenery, and 

 any enjoyment of the quiet unostentatious beauties of nature. 



From Bishop's Stortford, as far as Saffron Walden, the scene 

 is varied, the soil is chalky or marly, and the country is less pas- 

 toral and more agricultural ; but it, viz. this tract, has its beau- 

 ties as well as its utilities. 



About Audley End, as every one knows who has travelled from 

 London to Cambridge via Epping, the aspects of nature, height- 

 ened by art, are very agreeable. Much of this pleasure is lost 

 in these times of utilitarianism, for the rail does not pass through 

 this noble park as the road did and still does. 



Cambridge is not a very picturesque county, but, happily for 

 the traveller northwards, he enters it on its most attractive side, 

 between Royston and Linton. Here he will observe the cele- 

 brated Granta, whose banks both the Muses and Minerva have 

 selected for their habitation, where their temples are frequented 

 by devoted worshippers. Gogmagog Hills are on the right ; and 

 by rail and travelling by express the exquisite oliapel of King's 

 College is speedily in view. This architectural celebrity is not a 

 very striking object from the railway ; to be seen and appre- 

 ciated, the interior should be inspected. But our object was the 

 natural produce of the vegetable kingdom, not architecture, even 

 its admired examples, of which this is one of the most eminent. 



