384 DARTMOOR AND THE DART. 



stone with a graceful drapery. Half hid by a pendent 

 curtain of ivy, we noticed a shallow cavity I can 

 scarcely call it a cavern in which was growing a 

 clump of navelwort,* of more than usual luxuriance 

 even for these Devonshire lanes. The leaves, stalk, 

 and flowers were all most succulent, not a blossom 

 faded. One of these flower stalks, out of a clustered 

 group, I measured ; it was half-an-inch in diameter, 

 and exactly thirty inches in length from root to 

 point. 



A little further on, from the same rocky barrier, a 

 spring gushes out breast high, and is received into a 

 stone coffer, like the new drinking-fountains of Lon- 

 don streets, the water as clear and cool as a thirsty 

 pedestrian could desire ; nor was our relish of it 

 diminished by the fact that we found in its clear 

 recesses other revellers, f thorough teetotallers all. 



Presently a rushing brook passes beneath the road, 

 and, being collected into a wooden channel, crossed 

 with great flags for gangways, hurries away to a clack- 

 ing mill. It was pretty to mark the dense subaqueous 

 forest of water-blinks, how its long tufts waved and 

 quivered in the black rapid stream, beneath the sha- 

 dow of the tall meadow-sweet, most delightfully fra- 

 grant, that profusely bordered the water. This, how- 

 ever, was a deviation through inadvertence ; recover- 

 ing the road by a cross lane, we found the columbine 



* Cotyledon umbilicus. 



} Gammarus fluviatilis, Ancylus fluviatilis, Limnceus pereger, 

 Helix rufescens. 



