GENERAL REMARKS. 311 



eye deserves a passing notice. In June and July that picturesque 

 promontory glows with one full flush of vegetation, where the 

 red lychnis, the fair white blossoms of the sea-campion, spot- 

 ted with their purple anthers, and recumbent on the soft sea-green 

 under foliage, and the sea-pink, with her rose-coloured buttons, 

 and other blossoms, white, blue, and red, commingle to produce 

 one of the most brilliant and charming scenes. 



" Lo ! how they springe and sprede, and of divers hue, 

 Beholdith and seith, both white, red, and blue. 

 That lusty bin and comfortabyll for mannis sight, 

 For I say for myself it maketh my hert to light." 



The sandstone strata are succeeded by rocks of grey-wacke *, 

 and the change in the vegetable covering, if not striking at a first 

 glance, is nevertheless considerable. Unless the spot be moist 

 and boggy, and now there are few such spots, the grass grows no 

 longer rank, but forms a short green sward, principally, perhaps, 

 the growth of Festucce. The lychnis and the umbelliferse leave 

 these banks, retiring to the moist recesses in the ravines ; the 

 astragalus reappears, without, however, its companions, on the 

 southern shore, for the arenose plants do not endure even this 

 soil ; but we now meet with the ox-lip, the dwarf cistus, the vernal 

 squill, rose-root, the Scotch lovage, and others of a less interest- 

 ing character. On the unstratified rocks we find also the Arenaria 

 verna and Dianthus deltoides, which, in Berwickshire, appear to be 

 confined to this formation. The sandy plats produce the same 

 species as occur in similar sites in N. Durham, with only the ex- 

 ceptions of the Erythrcea littoralis and Geranium sanguineum^ a 

 deficiency almost compensated by the presence of the yellow 

 horned-poppy. 



Such is a very general outline of the botanical peculiarities of 

 our coast, and relative to those of the interior I have little to say. 

 Almost all the plants mentioned in the Flora are found scattered 

 through the district, from the shore even to the most inland parts, 

 distributed in general without any regard to the nature of the 

 geological formations, except in so far as the rocks may affect the 

 superincumbent soil in respect of depth, chemical composition, 

 and moisture. We have here, of course, as every where else, 

 plants which are peculiar to the sea side, to meadows, to culti- 



* See preface to vol. i. p. 18, &c. 



