292 MEADFOOT AND THE STARFISH. 



which, I had been told, grew thereabout, and was now 

 in blossom ; and partly to see what might be picked 

 up in the way of marine natural history among the 

 sea-washed rocks at the base of the precipice. 



An hour's stroll, which produced nothing that I 

 care to mention now, brought me to the plain, an 

 elevated down, in which, near the seaward edge, I 

 came suddenly on the yawning chasm. A great strip 

 of the limestone margin has slipped, separating from 

 the main body, and essaying its descent upon the far 

 beach below. It has, however, been arrested in its 

 course, and thus remains in its integrity, saving 

 some clefts and fissures, but leaving between it and 

 the mainland a great gulf, some thirty feet wide, and 

 about sixty deep on the average. The sides descend- 

 ing perpendicularly, resemble rugged walls of the 

 hard gray limestone, a resemblance heightened by the 

 stratification, which is here quite horizontal, like 

 courses of cyclopean masonry. Gray and black and 

 orange-coloured lichens give their many tints to the 

 harsh stone, and ferns and herbaceous plants throw 

 out their luxuriant tufts of various shades of green 

 from every crevice. Young ash-trees, bird-sown,: 

 springing from the debris at the bottom, have reared 

 their heads of graceful pinnate foliage almost to the 

 level of the walls, where the ivy, in its deep, dark, 

 glossy verdure, drapes the edges, and hangs down in 

 profuse festoons. In the intervals between, the mar- 

 gins are bright with the white rock-rose, the cheerful 

 yellow lotus, and several lands of stonecrop in fullest 



