46 Cornish Cliffs in Spring 



make it possible to struggle through them, and pass 

 from point to point amid a twilight under-world of 

 rabbit-burrows. But when, as is usual, they form 

 a wiry, resilient cushion a yard in depth and full 

 of underlying pitfalls, they are absolutely im- 

 penetrable. No yew hedge in a garden is clipped 

 more evenly than some of these spiny slopes, which 

 cling to the gullies and depressions of the cliff-face 

 like snow-drifts on mountains. It is a kind of 

 topiary-work which testifies to the unceasing rasp 

 of the landward winds in these sheltered slopes, 

 where no winds but the sea winds come. In stormy 

 weather the wind spouts up the narrow gullies in 

 the cliffs so strongly that if a slaty pebble is thrown 

 over the edge it is caught up and carried back inland. 

 It is this direct exposure to the warmth and 

 moisture which blow in from the Gulf Stream and 

 the wide fields of the Atlantic which gives the cliffs 

 of southern Cornwall their peculiar richness of vege- 

 tation. The contrast is very striking with the wilder 

 and bleaker northern coast-line of the county, though 

 the actual distance which separates them is but 

 small. The dark mass of central moorland cuts off 

 the north coast from the full effect of the southern 

 and south-western winds, which are chilled, dried, 

 and largely dissipated before they reach the opposite 

 shore. The northern coast is less fully exposed to 

 the sun and also more open to the cooler sea winds 

 from the north-west. Thus, though north Cornwall 

 enjoys the characteristic softness and freshness of 

 the Atlantic air, its climate is rightly reckoned a 

 bracing one ; whereas, when the warm seas pour 



