242 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



with celandines in early spring, still faces it, and the 

 cottage is covered with yellow jasmine and fragrant 

 honeysuckle, while a large shrub of Lycium barbarum, 

 or the tea-plant, forms an evergreen porch over the 

 doorway. Last summer several tall hollyhocks were 

 blooming in the cottage garden, and the little bed in 

 front of the parlour window was filled with Sedum 

 Telephium^ or livelong, a plant which still grows wild 

 in the neighbourhood. 



In the days when "Little Jane" and the village 

 children, under the guidance of their loving teacher, 

 were wont to learn the epitaphs on the tombstones 

 in Brading churchyard, the haven extended almost as 

 far as the parish church. Legh Richmond speaks of 

 it as "a large arm of the sea which at high tide 

 formed a broad lake or haven of three miles in 

 length." This estuary in former years was a famous 

 haunt of wildfowl, and back in the sixteenth century 

 we are told that Sir William Oglander " when itt wase 

 froste & snowe woolde goe downe to Bradinge Havan 

 a shootinge, where he woolde kill 40 coupell of fowle 

 in a nyght, hee & his man." The haven has now, 

 after many failures, been reclaimed, and large numbers 

 of cattle feed on the rank herbage. At the extreme 

 end of what was once " a large river or lake of sea 

 water" there still stands, " close to the edge of the sea 

 itself, the remains of the tower of an ancient church, 

 now preserved as a sea mark." This is the tower of 

 the old parish church of St. Helen's, the nave of which 

 has fallen a victim to the encroachment of the sea. 

 It is to be regretted that Legh Richmond was not a 

 scientific botanist, for the sandy spit of land on which 

 the tower stands is remarkable for its wealth of wild- 

 flowers. Though not exceeding forty or fifty acres in 



