Botany Bay Wood. 249 



preserved, it is of course only at certain seasons, and 

 then only by special favour, that people are allowed to 

 pass through, or can reasonably ask for leave. The 

 entrance to it is from Barton Moss, beginning with the 

 station, then crossing the waste at right angles, so as to 

 step on to a broad causeway which borders the moss 

 in a line parallel with the rails, and after becoming 

 greener and softer, at last enters the wood. Filling the 

 whole of the space between the grounds of Worsley Hall 

 and the edge of the moss, and of purely artificial origin, 

 this charming leafy covert received its somewhat singular 

 name from the workmen by whose labour it was formed. 

 So arduous was the toil demanded by the draining and 

 subsequent planting, that they compared it to the penalty 

 of transportation to the eighty years ago famous " Botany 

 Bay" of the antipodes, the terror of evil doers, and 

 precursor of the Dartmoor of to-day. Barton Moss is 

 essentially a portion or adjunct of Chat Moss, an element 

 of the landscape as surveyed from the higher parts of 

 Worsley, which can hardly be considered cheerful, though 

 rich in interesting associations, foremost among which is 

 the history of the means adopted to overcome the diffi- 

 culties it presented to the constructors of the original 

 Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The naturalist still 

 finds upon it abundance of welcome objects, including 

 the bog-myrtle, Myrica Gale, one of the very few really 

 indigenous British plants which can be rightfully called 

 aromatic. A surface like Chat Moss, saturated with wet, 

 seems in little danger of ignition, yet no further back 



