STONECEOPS HOUSELEEK. 121 



affections on things on earth, and the Spirit that breathes 



through all creation, as well as through all inspiration, adds, 



" Set your affections on things above," for " your life is hid 

 with Christ in God." 



" There from his rocky pulpit I heard cry 

 The Stonecrop : ' See how loose to earth I grow, 

 And draw my juicy nurture from the sky ; 

 So draw not thou, fond man, thy root too low. 

 But loosely clinging here, 

 From God's supernal sphere 



Draw life's unearthly food catch heaven's undying glow.'" 



REV. R. W. EVANS. 



The Tillsea is the first family of the Stonecrop tribe. Common 

 as Mr. Johns declares the Mossy Tillsea to be, it has never 

 come in my way. A weedy plant, resembling moss, with pro- 

 cumbent stems and sessile flowers, mostly three-cleft. I know 

 it only from Smith and Sowerby's beautiful illustration. 



The Common JNavelwort (Cotyledon umbilicus), is the chief 

 if not the sole member of its family. "With its shield-shaped 

 leaves, and upright racemes of waxy, bell-shaped flowers, it is a 

 familiar ornament of old walls and hedgebanks in Devonshire. 

 I have also found it abundantly about Ludlow, and on rocks 

 near Hoss, Herefordshire. My specimen was gathered near 

 Tiverton in July, and during the same month other specimens 

 were sent me from Linton. 



Sir J. E. Smith mentions a second species the Yellow 

 Navelwort ; but he says it is introduced as British by error. 



The third family of the Stonecrops is the Houseleek (Sem- 

 pervivum tectorum, Plate VIII., fig. 5), and it has only one 

 British member : a handsome, starry flower, with twelve petals, 

 and twelve or more stamens, large, and of a bright rose. The 

 thick, overlapping leaves are of a blue green tinge, rough at the 

 edges, and bordered with red. The blossoms grow in a kind of 

 straggling cyme, or three -branched raceme. It is a familiar 

 ornament of roofs and walls ; my piece was gathered at Birk 

 Park, in Swaledale. The leaves of the Houseleek have cooling 



