26 Country Rambles. 



opening fresh and fresh every day as the stalk uncoils. It 

 may be added, as furnishing another example of the 

 variety in the distribution of plants, that the forget-me- 

 not, like the arum, is wanting on the Prestwich side of 

 the town, while the sylvan horsetail, so abundant in Mere 

 Clough, is comparatively a stranger to the valley of the 

 Bollin. To young people who have the opportunity of 

 exploring the respective places, independently of the 

 large local knowledge they acquire, it is a most instruc- 

 tive employment to note these phenomena, for they 

 are all more or less intimately connected with the 

 grandest and widest laws of physical geography the 

 great, as we have shown before, represented in the little 

 and no science will be found in after life more 

 thoroughly entertaining or more practically useful. Be- 

 sides these more choice and remarkable flowers, there are 

 in Cotterill Wood at this period anemones and bluebells 

 without end; while in the upper part, accessible by the 

 path before-mentioned, and which should on no account 

 be left unvisited, the firs and larches are at the acme of 

 their floral pride. The flowers of these trees, like those 

 of the hazel and alder, are some of them only male, 

 others only female. The female flowers in due time 

 become the seed-cones, announcing them from afar; the 

 male flowers likewise assume the cone form, but as soon 

 as the purpose of their being is accomplished, they wither 

 and drop off. In the larch, the females are of a delicate 

 pink, contrasting exquisitely with the tender green of the 

 young tufted leaves, and conspicuous from their large size, 



