36 Country Rambles, 



the country resembles that in the vicinity of Castle Mill, 

 consisting of gentle slopes and promontories, often 

 wooded, and at every turn presenting some new and 

 agreeable feature. The little dells and doughs, each 

 with its stream of clear water scampering away to the 

 Bollin, are delicious. The botany of Cotterill is also 

 recapitulated in its best features; mosses of the choicest 

 kinds grow in profusion on every bank, Hypna, with 

 large green feathery branches, like ferns in miniature; 

 Jungermannias also ; and the noblest plants of the hart's- 

 tongue fern that occur in the district. One of the dells 

 positively overflows with it, excepting, that is, where the 

 ground is not pre-occupied by the prickly shield-fern. 

 Burleyhurst Wood, close by, contains abundance of the 

 pretty green-flowered true-love, Paris quadrifolia, more 

 properly trulove, the name referring not to the sentiment 

 itself, but to the famous old four-fold symbol of engage- 

 ment which in heraldry reappears in "quartering." All 

 the spring flowers open here with the first steps of the 

 renewed season; and most inspiring is it, at a time when 

 on the north side of the town there is nothing to be seen 

 but an early coltsfoot, to find one's self greeted in these 

 sweet and perennially green woods, by the primrose, the 

 anemone, the butter-bur, and the golden saxifrage, and 

 not as single couriers, but plentiful as the delight they 

 give, mingling with the great ferns bequeathed by the 

 autumn, as travellers tell us palms and fir-trees intermix 

 on tropical mountains, while the Marchantia adds 

 another charm in its curious cones ? and the smooth 



