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CHAP. IX. 



MARITIME PLANTS. 



Seaside Flowers. Interest attache'd to them. Vegetation of 

 Seaside less luxuriant than in Inland Places. Sea-side Grasses 

 Sea-side flowering Plants. Examples of various Species. 



MANY a charm, besides its geological features, its 

 rocks festooned with algae, its beach of smooth 

 sand or of intermingled shells and pebbles, does 

 the seaside present to its contemplative visitor. 

 It exhibits to him a class of objects very pleasant 

 at once to the mind that thinks of them and the 

 eye that perceives them, in the flowers and plants 

 peculiar to the sea-shore or its vicinity. To such 

 plants and flowers the title of maritime is given. 

 They delight to dwell, as a general rule, out of 

 the reach of the waves, but still almost always 

 near enough to the sea to be sprinkled with its 

 spray during a storm ; and had they but organs of 

 hearing they must always hear the voice of the 

 waves either murmuring on the beach in the soft 

 west winds, or thundering on the shore in a 

 tempest. 



And truly most agreeable to the mind and the 

 eye are those maritime plants, for they possess 

 much of the beauty derived from form, from 

 colour, or from adaptation of character and quality 

 to the place of their abode, and they suggest 



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