Whittle-le- Woods. 235 



quiet and pretty walk by the edge of the canal, for wild- 

 flowers found nowhere else near Manchester. Excepting 

 in the canal at Disley, there is not another within the 

 distance where there are in particular so many pond- 

 weeds, that beautiful plant the lucens leading the way. 

 Of these submerged things the question has been asked 

 perhaps more frequently than of any others, What use 

 are they ? Rest upon them, then, for a moment. Use 

 is a triple idea. Taking the entire mass of the vegeta- 

 tion of our planet, first there is economic use, as for food, 

 which last being rendered to brute creatures as well as to 

 mankind, is at the best but at a low and menial one. 

 Secondly, comes the admirable use subserved by beauty, 

 which brutes are incapable of appreciating, and blind- 

 ness to which, like the use of foul and profane language, 

 may be taken perhaps as the infallible sign of an imbecile. 

 Plants can never be truly learned, nor is their highest use 

 realised so long as we rest in the contemplation, albeit 

 so salutary, even of their loveliness. Their last and crown- 

 ing use comes of their interpreting power. There is not 

 a species that does not cast some welcome side-light, that 

 does not open our understanding to something previously 

 unperceived. The pond-weeds do this, if nothing below, 

 so that meeting with them we may rejoice. 



The fine old halls scattered so freely about Bolton 

 have counterparts in the neighbourhood of Wigan, all 

 this part of the county having been in the hands of 

 wealthy men during the time of the Stuarts and of the 

 Commonwealth. Ince Hall, black and white, with its 



