182 JULY. 



diamonds. There wave the cotton-rush, the 

 tall fox-glove, and the taller golden mullein ; 

 there grows the classical grass of Parnassus, 

 the elegant favourite of every poet ; there creep 

 the various species of heathberries, cranberries, 

 bilberries, etc. furnishing the poor with a source 

 of profit, and the rich of simple luxury. What 

 a pleasure it is to throw ourselves down beneath 

 the verdant screen of the beautiful fern, or in 

 the shade of a venerable oak, in such a scene, 

 and listen to the summer sound of bees, grass- 

 hoppers, and ten thousand other insects, min- 

 gled with the more remote and solitary cry of 

 the peewit and curlew ! Then to think of the 

 coach-horse urged on his sultry stage, and the 

 plough-boy and his team plunging in the depths 

 of a burning fallow, or of our ancestors, in times 

 of national famine, plucking up the wild fern 

 roots* for bread, and what an enhancement of 

 our own luxurious ease ! 



But woods, the depths of woods, are the most 

 delicious retreats during the fiery noons of July. 

 The great azure campanulas or Canterbury bells, 

 are there in bloom ; and in chalk or limestone 

 districts there are also now to be found those 

 curious plants the bee andjfi/ orchis. The soul 



* It is perhaps not known to every juvenile lover of nature, 

 that a transverse section of a fern-root presents a miniature 

 picture of an oak tree. 



