176 Grey Rock and Thyme 



where the soil is neither limestone nor chalk ; but 

 here it grows weedier and less graceful than on 

 the hills where it fringes the milky chalkpits, or 

 the grey protrusions of the heart-rock of the lime- 

 stone hills. 



The difference is great between the characteristic 

 scenery of the curved and sweeping downs and 

 the limestone hills, with their naked scarps and 

 terraces, and rough outcrops of rock that nature 

 has never clothed. But the flowers, trees, and 

 shrubs are so often identical in kind, and so widely 

 distinct from those which are characteristic of 

 intervening soils, that they continually call up 

 associations of far other landscapes, and of distant 

 tracts where the ancient diversity of the English 

 races and kingdoms still permeates the landscapes 

 and their life. In a grey gorge above the Severn Sea, 

 the whitebeams and guelder-rose trees, paling to 

 the fresh June wind, recall the long line of Surrey 

 and Kentish downs that gazes over all the Southern 

 Weald, or of the Danish battle-grounds on the hills 

 of inland Thames. The white-plumed drop wort is 

 familiar on the grassland of both soils, and so is the 

 deep blue campanula, which supplies among the 

 flowers of English hills the true gentian blue, not 

 found in any gentian of our own, except a rare 

 Alpine survival among the hills of Westmorland. 

 These two flowers are less abundant on the lime- 

 stone than on the chalk, perhaps because the lime- 

 stone lies in the rainier quarters of the island, while 

 the chalk is sunny and dry. But one beautiful 

 climbing shrub, which is fonder of no soil than of 



