Here at Grasmere the woods, ghylls, and mountain 

 slopes are richly clad with ferns, flowers, grasses, and 

 mosses : nowhere in the L,ake District do ferns grow in 

 such luxuriance. The glorious tufts of plumy lady fern 

 and buckler fern ; ophioglossum vulgatum (adder's tongue) 

 and botrychium lunaria (moonwort) both the latter growing 

 only in the upland meadows. The black maidenhair 

 spleenwort, which Gray describes as the "shining spleen- 

 wort ;" also, hymenophyllum Wilsoni and Tunbridgense are 

 found on Hammarscar, and, in the opinion of experts, 

 unsurpassed in this country. Further over to the Easdale 

 Fells and Blindtarn Ghyll are the purple ling and cross- 

 leaved heaths ; also, the bilberry, crowberry, cranberry, 

 and cowbeny ; wild roses, hawthorns, and rowans, with 

 their gorgeous display of hips and berries, standing out 

 conspicuously from the hazel and the honeysuckle ; and, 

 still higher, the juniper and bracken take sole possession. 

 Near at hand is Whiteside, the memorable spot where 

 George and Sarah Green perished early in this century. 

 The story is graphically related by De Quincey. These 

 lycopodiums were gathered there by me a few days ago. 

 Wordsworth describes them as "fox's tails and staghorn " 

 in the "Idle Shepherd Boys of Dungeon Ghyll." The 

 varieties here are lycopodium clavatum, alpinum, and selago, 

 the latter a medicinal plant, and of commercial value to 

 hosiers and theatricals. Bearing to the left over the crest 

 of Silver How and Gamses Quarry, wild strawberries, toad 

 flax, moneywort, and cranesbill are woven into the primitive 

 rocks ; and in the sheltered recesses of the ghyll, are 

 primroses, mosses, and lysimachia nummularia, with its long 

 racemes of golden, pendulous blossoms. 



But to find these and other native plants acclimatised 

 from their haunts, take a glance round the old home of 

 Wordsworth, Dove Cottage, where the snowdrops, fox- 



