12 NATUKE IN ENGLAND. 



polled to do the eight miles at night, stepping off very 

 lively the last four in order to reach Maidstone before 

 the hotels were shut up, which takes place at eleven 

 o'clock. I learned this night how fragrant the Eng- 

 lish elder is while in bloom, and that distance lends 

 enchantment to the smell. When I plucked the flow- 

 ers, which seemed precisely like our own, the odor 

 was rank and disagreeable ; but at the distance of a 

 few yards it floated upon the moist air, a spicy and 

 pleasing perfume. The elder here grows to be a ver- 

 itable tree ; I saw specimens seven or eight inches in 

 diameter and twenty feet high. In the morning we 

 walked back by a different route, taking in Boxley 

 Church, where the pilgrims used to pause on their 

 way to Canterbury, and getting many good views of 

 Kent grain-fields and hop-yards. Sometimes the road 

 wound through the landscape like a foot-path, with 

 nothing between it and the rank growing crops. An 

 occasional newly -plowed field presented a curious 

 appearance. The soil is upon the chalk formation, 

 and is full of large fragments of flint. These work 

 out upon the surface, and, being white and full of 

 articulations and processes, give to the ground the 

 appearance of being thickly strewn with bones, with 

 thigh bones greatly foreshortened. Yet these old 

 bones in skillful hands make a most effective building 

 material. They appear in all the old churches and 

 ancient buildings in the south of England. Broken 

 squarely off, the flint shows a fine semi-transparent 

 surface that, in combination with coarser material, 



