230 Slimmer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



may meet a rude cart laden with some thin-looking 

 produce jolting slowly down the ruts towards the 

 farm, and looking as though at any moment it might 

 send its burden rolling down the grassy steep. This 

 curious tract of half-wild land is thus in reality a 

 part of Bindon ; but its vegetation is totally different 

 from his. Here, and on the rocks and broken sandy 

 slopes which overlook the sea, grow many curious 

 plants, as well as abundance of thistles and other 

 ordinary weeds; and here, I think, the butterflies, 

 which so abound in the summer on Bindon's back 

 and flanks, must pass the earlier stages of their 

 existence as caterpillars and chrysalides, until their 

 wings enable them to seek for change of scene and 

 fresh blossoms on the heights above. 



The geological relation of Bindon to this lower 

 territory of his is an interesting one ; and, though no 

 geologist, I may venture a word on what addresses 

 itself so readily to an eye at all accustomed to ob- 

 serve. Bindon is a single segment in a long spine 

 of chalk down stretching from Weymouth Bay to 

 Poole Harbour. The whole of this spine was at 

 one time protected from the sea by a rampart of 

 Portland rock, with which it was connected by a 

 series of beds of sand and clay. In its eastern half 

 it is still so protected ; from Swanage Bay to Arish- 

 mill Gap the voracious sea has never been able to 

 set his mark upon it. But the little stream that 



