THE FLORA. 67 



small. Few, perhaps, can prefer the slightest claim to be 

 considered truly wild, except the hawthorns and sallows in the 

 inland hedgerows. Many, however, of the most admired and 

 interesting ligneous plants of the country have been intro- 

 duced, and these, in gardens, plantations, and other cultivated 

 land, as a rule, thrive admirably, and give that very agreeable 

 sense of leafiness which in sheltered situations is augmenting 

 every day. Without reckoning the crowd of exotics now giving 

 such excellent promise in the Hesketh Park and in the Church- 

 town Botanic Gardens, the variety and the capital complexion 

 of the purely British kinds which have been brought together 

 in those two admirable enclosures, show that the climate of 

 Southport is congenial to an exceedingly high per centage. 

 The only native tree which the Southport air and soil seem 

 not to agree with is the yew. 



The Southport sandhills form, without question, one of the 

 most remarkable features of Lancashire. Continued south- 

 wards almost to Liverpool, the surface occupied by the whole 

 has been calculated at not less than twenty-two square miles. 

 The history of the original formation is a matter also into 

 which the mind cannot but enquire with great interest. In 

 Mr. Leo Grindon's "Lancashire" (1882), p. 54, it is stated 

 that in the opinion of the distinguished geologist, Mr. T. 

 Melland Reade, they have taken certainly not less than 2,500 

 years to acquire their present dimensions probably a much 

 longer time. "Some of the mounds, however, are palpably 

 quite recent, interstratifications of cinders and matter thrown 

 up from wrecks being found near the base. A strong westerly 

 wind brings up the sand vehemently, and very curious then 

 becomes the spectacle of its travel, which is like thin waves of 



