48 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



finished ; for the history of the Bath valley, as seen 

 from Claverton Down, is, as I said before, the history 

 of all England, visibly epitomised in tangible realities 

 before one's very eyes. 



However, I have not come out to-day to hunt for 

 old relics among the works of Caer Badon, or to trace 

 the curious bends and angles of Wansdyke. A far 

 older and stranger chapter of our history than any of 

 these is unfolded by the little wayside weed which I 

 have here in my botanical case ; and it was to find 

 this very commonplace and uninteresting-looking 

 plant that I have come out this morning. For the 

 weed is the hairy wood-spurge, and Claverton Down 

 is the only place in Great Britain where that parti- 

 cular kind of spurge still lingers on. I have got my 

 British Flora safe here in my satchel ; and now I am 

 going to sit down on the slope of Wansdyke and 

 make quite sure that my plant really tallies exactly 

 with Dr. Bentham's description ; for if it actually does, 

 then I shall have the pleasure of knowing that I hold 

 in my hand one of the few genuine links which yet 

 unite us with a very distant past — a past compared 

 with which the days when Wansdyke was built, or 

 even when Little Solisbury was fortified, seem com- 

 paratively recent. If this is In fact the hairy wood- 

 spurge,^ it and its ancestors have been growing here 



See fig. 13. 



