166 SEASIDE DIYINITT. 



ten feet, and produces large flowers, the petals of 

 which are purplish rose-colour, darker on the base 

 than elsewhere; the Tamarisk (Tamarisk gal- 

 lica), a small shrub with minute scattered leaves 

 and beautiful clusters of reddish, flesh-coloured, or 

 white flowers, is found in rocky places, and chiefly 

 on the southern coast of Britain ; and the common 

 sallow thorn, a bushy shrub five or six feet in 

 height, with green flowers and orange- coloured 

 berries, whose native places are the rocks and 

 cliffs of our eastern shores, and various species of 

 the Eock Eose (Helianthemum), which produce in 

 rapid succession during summer thin white or 

 yellow flowers which are so frail as scarcely to 

 last a day. Then there is the Eed-fruited Dwarf 

 Eose (Rosa rubella), about three feet high, 

 bearing white flowers tinged with pink, and bright 

 scarlet fruit-, which grows in the sand in several 

 parts of the eastern coast; and the silky sand 

 willow, a shrub about four or five feet high, 

 which makes its abode on the sea-shore among 

 loose sand. 



We have hitherto confined our enumeration 

 strictly to those flowers and plants which belong 

 to the sea-shore, and either occupy the rocks, or 

 grow in sand and gravel, ' or in marshes, or in 

 muddy places. This plan was indispensable, be- 

 cause in the " debateable ground " which is neither 

 sea-coast nor inland, as well as in sheltered fields 

 and meadows, or along the shores of estuaries not 

 much exposed to violent tempests, and too narrow 

 to allow the waves to rise so high as to scatter 



