90 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



perfoliate yellow-wort, it makes a fine show in spring 

 and summer-time. But perhaps the choicest spot along 

 the coast, where sea-plants can be seen in their most 

 attractive surroundings, is in the immediate vicinity of 

 the famous Tilly Whim caves. The caves themselves 

 are disused quarries, and apart from their interest as 

 old workings, and as the haunt of smugglers in after- 

 times, they appeal to the botanist in several respects. 

 More than one clump of the increasingly rare and charm- 

 ing fern, Asplenium marinum, L., or the sea spleenwort, 

 continues to flourish in inaccessible positions ; and the 

 pellitory-of-the-wall, common enough on old ruins and 

 castles, may here be seen in its natural surroundings, 

 growing abundantly on its native rocks. On the per- 

 pendicular cliffs hard by other striking plants blossom. 

 The samphire (Crithmum maritimum, L.) grows in pro- 

 fusion, and in days when the succulent plant was 

 accounted a delicacy was doubtless gathered by the 

 hardy fishermen and sent up in barrels to London. The 

 business " horrid trade," as Shakespeare terms it, be- 

 cause of the danger attendant upon gathering the plant 

 was a fairly lucrative one as late as the middle of the 

 last century, when the plant fetched four or five shillings 

 a bushel. With the samphire on the cliffs of Tilly 

 Whim also grows the rare Inula crithmoides, L., or 

 golden samphire, which, while bearing in part the same 

 English name, is yet of an entirely different order of 

 British plants. It has succulent leaves, it is true, and 

 has sometimes been used as a substitute for the true 

 samphire, but it belongs to the order of Composite 

 plants, and is a stately and upright species, with heads 

 of golden-yellow flowers. It sometimes thrives, as in 

 my old parish of Porchester, on the seashore, but at 



