114 



THE WILD CLEMATrs. 



any spring or apparent moisture ; and yet, in those 

 uncommonly dry summers of 1825 and 1826, it 

 seemed to flourish with more than usual vigour, 

 throwing out its long tendrils, of a fine healthy 

 green colour, adorned with a profusion of blossoms, 

 itself and the bramble being in some places the only 

 thriving vegetation in a fence. It is marvellous 

 how fibrous-rooted vegetables, the roots of which 

 penetrate no depth into the soil, are enabled in 

 some seasons to preserve any appearance of verdure, 

 the earth they are fixed in seeming divested of all 

 moisture by the power of the sun, and being heated 

 like a sand-bath. The warmth of the earth in 

 1825 I omitted to record ; but in the following 

 year, which was more dry, and nearly as hot, the 

 thermometer buried in the earth to the depth of 

 three inches, in a flower border where many plants 

 were growing in that sort of languid state which 

 they present in such exhausting seasons, indicated 

 the heat of 110. 



Having said thus much of the clematis, the " wi- 

 thy-wind" of our peasantry, it must not be sup- 

 posed that I advocate the advantages of this plant as 

 a fence, but only tolerate it where we cannot induce 

 much else to thrive, it making something of a boun- 

 dary line; and perhaps that is all, for very fre- 

 quently its numerous tendrils, and the downy clus- 

 ters of its caudated seeds are so interwoven, that 

 the snow accumulates upon the bush, and presses 



