CHARMS OF JULY. 19 



assured us that he had counted, on a specimen of 

 extraordinary dimensions, the remarkable number 

 of three hundred and sixty-five flowers, exclusive of 

 unexpanded buds. This must have been a giant. 

 We could not have selected a more propitious time 

 for seeing nature in her loveliness ; it was what Virgil 

 elegantly calls " formosissimus annus," the year in 

 the height of beauty. The opening of July is the 

 season when more plants are in flower than at any 

 other period; the joyous insects are gay upon the 

 wing, and those birds that are so inseparably asso- 

 ciated with lovely summer weather are all with us ; 

 the atmosphere is apt to be calm and clear, and the 

 deep transparent azure of the sky is reflected with a 

 deeper intensity from the sparkling sea, just as we 

 saw it now, as from our bowery walk we ever and 

 anon gazed out upon the broad main, the white sails 

 scattered over its surface, gleaming in the morning 

 sun, and answering to the fleecy clouds that flitted 

 over the face of heaven. 



" Land and sea 

 Give themselves up to jollity." 



Several tiny streamlets ooze out from the upland 

 moors, and trickling down the sloping sides find their 

 way along the chines and gullies to the sea. The 

 spongy nature of the soil, and the matting of the 

 vegetation impeding the flow of the water, cause the 

 courses of these streams to form bogs, difficult to pass, 

 but presenting some objects of interest. In the first 

 that we came to we found two kinds of speedwell, the 



