120 A RAMBLE TO BRANDY COVE. 



hood. How they manage to get the fast-sticking 

 limpet from his rocky base, however, I am at a loss to 

 imagine. It requires considerable adroitness in a 

 human practitioner to effect the removal with the aid 

 of the point of a pocket-knife thrust under the margin 

 of the shell. And it must be done in a moment, too ; 

 for if you give the shell-fish the least warning, he 

 screws down his shell so tight, and brings the force of 

 his adhering muscles to bear so powerfully, that he 

 defies your operations. But the instinct an.d cunning 

 of all the crows are very great, especially when 

 whetted by hunger. 



Portions of the land are enclosed and cultivated at 

 the top of these downs, and a man was ploughing 

 here as I passed. The walls which bound the field, 

 running along to the edge of the cliff, are built of 

 loose, dry stones, in the country manner, affording in 

 the crevices root-space for many wall-loving plants. 

 The .pretty pale yellow heads of the clover-like flower, 

 called lady's fingers, was growing on them in profu- 

 sion, as it does in the clefts of the rocks all about 

 these precipitous shores, embellishing their rugged- 

 ness with its delicate blossoms. Out of the side of 

 the stone wall also grew numbers of tall and noble 

 foxgloves that most magnificent of British flowers : 

 several of them were already in blossom, though it 

 was yet May ; and indeed that reminds me that most 

 of the flowers here appear earlier than the earliest 

 period assigned to them in Hooker's " British Flora/' 

 Surely a finer spectacle than a group of foxgloves, 



