Capesthorne. 139 



question forms a conspicuous object on the left-hand 

 side of the railway, immediately after leaving Chelford 

 en route to Alderley. 



CAPESTHORNE lies between Henbury and Chelford; and 

 although the Chelford station is the nearest for it, the 

 walk by the Congleton road, past Alderley Park, is so 

 charmingly wooded, that it never becomes tedious. 

 From Chelford the distance is about two miles. All the 

 beauties of a Cheshire park are here to be seen, not 

 omitting the customary sheet of water, which in the 

 present instance is divided into two portions. In parts 

 it is blossomed over with water-lilies, those glorious 

 plants that lay out, as it were, a floral Venice, and seem 

 colonists from the tropics rather than the ancient Britons 

 that they are. At the southern end, close to the margin, 

 among sallows, &c., grows plenty of the Aspid'ium 

 Thdyp'teris, a fern found in abundance also at Wybun- 

 bury and at Knutsford, but in the latter locality annually 

 removed by the scythe. " Reeds Mere," as this one in 

 Capesthorne Park is called, produces also the Hippuris 

 vulgaris, believed to grow nowhere else near Manchester. 

 It is provided, moreover, with a floating island, one or 

 two acres in extent, and covered with trees and brush- 

 wood, predominant among which is the fragrant shrub 

 called sweet-gale. Ordinarily, the island remains moored 

 near the centre, but strong currents of wind move it 

 away, and keep it so, until affected by powerful counter- 

 currents. 



