154 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



there is certainly not that profusion of vegetation 

 which you used to make me notice at Brazil ; 

 and there is a gravity in these English woods, 

 which I told tlfem is very different from the gay 

 and flowery appearance of the woods, and even 

 of the road-sides, in Brazil, where the hedges of 

 myrtle, china roses, scarlet passion-flowers, and 

 trumpet flowers, make so gay a mixture. The 

 autumn tints, so much admired here, are per- 

 fectly dead, compared to those of South 

 America. 



I described, also, our plains or campus, with 

 the humming-birds buzzing like bees round the 

 flowering shrubs, and the myriads of gay butter- 

 flies, fluttering over the streams. How astonished 

 these Gloucestershire people would be, if they 

 were to see the troops of emus or American 

 ostriches, which run with the swiftness of horses 

 through the bushes, accompanied by their 

 young ! 



Insignificant, however, as the forest of Deane 

 appears to me, I find that it once chiefly sup- 

 plied the British navy ; and was considered of so 

 much importance, that one of the special in- 

 structions to the Admiral of the Spanish Armada, 

 was to destroy it. 



27/A. We had another boating party to-day, 

 to take the Miss Maudes home. The river was 

 quite alive, so many trading vessels were going 



