382 DARTMOOR AND THE DART. 



crevices of the courses are thickly studded with dense 

 tufts of the familiar wall spleenwort fern ;* so thickly, 

 that viewed at a slight angle the whole surface of the 

 upper wall seems covered with the feathery fringe. 

 The plants have the appearance of great age ; they 

 are very luxuriant, but this is the result of their long 

 growth, for when examined they have a very different 

 character from the long and broad-leafed succulent 

 crowns that adorn the hedges at Daccombe. These 

 are narrow, thin, dry and wiry, and far more plumose, 

 and of a golden-brown tint of green. The great snap- 

 dragon also throws out its crimson spikes from the 

 walls. 



Here, then, in this quiet old-fashioned place, one of 

 the four ancient Stannary towns, and boasting the 

 honour of having given birth to Grifford, the quondam 

 editor of the Quarterly, we took up our head-quarters. 



One of our earliest walks was to the romantic Dart 

 at Home Bridge. Leaving the town by the opposite 

 end of the long street to that by which we had entered 

 it, we found the walls again clad with the trichomanes, 

 if possible even more luxuriant, and accompanied with 

 other ferns, as the wall-rue, the common polypody, 

 the ceterach, the maidenhair spleenwort, and the 

 hart's-tongue, all, except the last two, particularly 

 fine. Indeed, we cannot walk a mile without per- 

 ceiving how pre-eminently this is a region of ferns. 



It was a pleasant excursion, that early morning 

 walk, with the brilliant sun drinking up the dew- 



* Asplenium trichomanes. 



