DEVONIAN DAMES. 381 



elegantly-banded hedge snails, on the scout for their 

 dewy breakfast, and looking like fantastically-painted 

 fruits clinging to the twigs. 



Through Newton Abbot we roll, and remark with 

 surprise how fast it is increasing on every side, on 

 towards Ashburton, the scenery becoming richer and 

 more varied. It is market-day at Newton, and 

 numbers of farmers' daughters and wives, comely 

 Devonian dames, are riding to market with cloth- 

 covered panniers attached to their side-saddles, well 

 filled, doubtless, with butter and eggs, poultry-ware, 

 or whatever mysteries besides Dame Dobbins is wont 

 to carry on such occasions. The hedgerows are still 

 gay with flowers ; the abundant yellow vetchling, two 

 species of St John's wort, the toadflax, precursor of 

 autumn, and hawkweeds, supply the golden colours ; 

 the foxglove and the campions the crimsons ; and the 

 blues and purples are afforded by the profusely elegant 

 racemes of the tufted vetch, resembling pendent 

 clusters of grapes in miniature. We miss the poly- 

 stichum, our most common hedge-fern, and instead 

 of it the filix-mas spreads its great crowns along the 

 road-margin, and the tall brake crowds up among the 

 tree-trunks of yonder wood. 



Peeps of the Moor, at least its south-west corner, 

 break upon us at various turns of the road, blue and 

 shadowy, like a huge rampart, ever becoming, as we 

 advance, more and more palpable. At length we 

 enter Ashburton, between lofty walls, gray, weather- 

 worn, and lichened. Old, old walls are these ; for the 



