SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 69 



cannot often be gathered wild. Its stem has 

 spreading branches, and is about two feet high, 

 with downy leaved. The whole of the plant 

 is covered with dense starry hairs, and short 

 prickles, each rising from a little glandular base. 

 The large handsome flowers have little odour 

 during day, but when evening comes diffuse great 

 sweetness on the air, and the wanderer by moon- 

 light, or even beneath the dark and cloudy sky 

 of night, might pause to wonder that so sweet 

 a scent should be wafted to him by winds, which 

 at that season he would not expect to bear upon 

 them the odour of the flower. The hoary shrubby 

 stock (Matliiola incana), which grows often plen- 

 tifully on the rocks near Hastings, is not truly 

 wild there, though generally enumerated in the 

 list of flowers which form our British flora. It is 

 the origin of our garden stock gilliflower, and is, 

 as Dr. Hooker observes, generally treated by our 

 gardeners as an annual or biennial. The pale 

 lilac Virginian, or more properly Mediterranean 

 stock, is sometimes enumerated among our native 

 flowers of the sea-shore. It is very plentiful on 

 the coasts of the Mediterranean, and may, like 

 others, have been naturalized on our isle. But, as 

 has been observed, it grows wild under the cliffs 

 between St. Margaret's and Dovor, where there 

 are no houses near, and therefore it is not likely 

 that it is there the outcast of a garden. 



Who that wanders by glen or over hills when 

 wild flowers cluster, is not glad to be greeted by 

 the scent of the wild Rose ? Who is not ready 

 to admit, with Pliny, that the rose is the first of 

 flowers, and the lily the second? We no longer 

 think the fennel has the sweetest of scents, nor 



