HYND CASTLE. 309 



according as the soil was less or more bad. These 

 were symptoms miserable enough to have succeeded 

 to forests and groves ; and if we could fill up the 

 chasm in the succession, we should have at least 

 one satisfactory portion of the history of vegetation ; 

 but we want the facts, and so conjecture would be 

 useless. 



The mixture of lime in the fallen part of the castle 

 had nursed the henbanes and hemlocks, and other 

 lurid plants which love such places, and the decay 

 of these had brought on a coat of soil. About fifty 

 years ago, the little mound was enclosed and planted, 

 chiefly with Scotch firs, but with a border of decidu- 

 ous trees, and a few interspersed among the Scotch 

 firs. For a time they all grew luxuriantly ; the firs 

 made shoots of a foot to two feet every year ; the 

 laburnums hung out their racemes of golden yellow, 

 the mountain-ash made the summer fragrant with 

 its flowers, and the autumn gay with its berries. 

 The thrush and the blackbird came with their mel- 

 low songs, the little birds with their more lively 

 notes, and the wood-pigeon moaned from the deep 

 covert of the pines. The magpie and the jay, too, 

 came to take account of the spare eggs ; and weasels, 

 and even a polecat, made their appearance. In short, 

 the place became a little oasis in the desert, a 

 thriving miniature world, both vegetable and animal ; 

 and the promise that it gave led to the planting of 

 many square miles of the moors. Meantime, an 

 impulse was given to agriculture, by the farmer be- 

 ing pulled on to activity by high prices, and spurred 

 in the same direction by high rents, so that the 

 marshes were drained, the wastes improved, and a 

 more kindly appearance, and certainly a more mild 

 and uniform climate, obtained. 



Now it was generally supposed, and anybody but 

 a very attentive observer of nature would naturally 

 have supposed, that matters were in the fairest train 

 for a well- wooded as weU as agriculturally improved 



