MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. 231 



Here the dwarf sallows creep, the septfoil harsh. 

 And the soft slimy mallow of the marsh. 

 Low on the ear the distant billows sound. 

 And just in view appears their stony bound." 



" The ditches of a fen so near the ocean," says the poet, 

 in the note which accompanies this passage, " are lined with, 

 irregular patches of a coarse-stained laver ; a muddy sedi- 

 ment rests on the horse-tail and other perennial herbs which 

 in part conceal the shallowness of the stream ; a fat-leaved, 

 pale-flowering scurvy-grass appears early in the year, and the 

 razor-edged bullrush in the summer and autumn. The fen 

 itself has a dark and saline herbage : there are rushes and 

 arrow-head ; and in a few patches the flakes of the cotton- 

 grass are seen, but more commonly the sea-aster, the dullest 

 of that numerous and hardy genus ; a thrift, blue in flower, 

 but withering, and remaining withered till the winter scat- 

 ters it ; the salt-wort, both simple and shrubby ; a few kinds 

 of grass changed by the soil and atmosphere ; and low plants 

 of two or three denominations, undistinguished in the general 

 view of scenery ; — such is the vegetation of the fen where it 

 is at a small distance from the ocean." 



And such are the descriptions of Crabbe, at once a poet 

 and a botanist. In referring to the blue tint exhibited in 

 salt-fens by the pink-coloured flower of the thrift (Statice 

 armeria), he might have added, that the general green of the 

 terrestrial vegetation likewise assumes, when subjected to 

 those modified marine influences under which plants of the 

 land can continue to live, a decided tinge of blue. It is 

 further noticeable, that the general brown of at least the 

 larger algae presents, as they creep upwards upon the beach 

 to meet with these, a marked tinge of yellow. The pre- 

 vailing brown of the one flora approximates towards yel- 

 low, — the prevailing green of the other towards blue ; and 

 thus, instead of mutually merging into some neutral tint, 



