106 A DAY’S BOTANIZING ABOUT TRING. 
still better than knowledge may be secured, viz. fresh air, healthy 
exercise, enlargement of the understanding, cheerfulness of mind, 
and many other desiderata que nunc prescribere longum est. 
We left the railway at Tring station, about two miles to the 
left of that ancient town, which we walked through. Friday was 
market-day, an auspicious day for seeing some of the peculiarities 
of rustic life. These we did not neglect to observe, though we 
cannot afford room to specify them here. Beyond Tring we di- 
verged from the Wendover and Aylesbury road, and went through 
some fields, and entered the Beech-woods which crown the sum- 
mits of the hills between Wendover and Trmg. Beech-woods 
abound on all the hills in this part of Herts and Bucks. Our 
object was to collect a few specimens of the Pyrola which grows 
there, and which was noticed by Mr. Pamplin above thirty years 
ago, as is recorded in the ‘ New Botanical Guide. The Pyrola 
grows there still; and this, its ancient locality, will in all proba- 
bility be undisturbed for many ages yet to come. It is not very 
plentiful even here, so far as our observation extended. There 
were in these woods a few interesting plants, and only a few. 
The cornfields yielded but a very scanty harvest to the botanist ; 
we hope the farmers will be better satisfied with their produc- 
tiveness. We do not know if this is attributable to the extra- 
ordinary lateness of the season or to some other cause; but cer- 
tainly we never saw such a scarcity of plants peculiar to chalk- 
soils in any other cretaceous district. Our list of plants would 
be more respectable if it was confined to what we expected to 
see and did not see. The species collected were very few. The 
ground under the trees in all the woods, except the steep hangers, 
was covered with Asperula odorata: it surely does not grow 
anywhere in greater abundance. Finer specimens were never 
seen, in all stages, flowering and in fruit. We would recom- 
mend the herbalists who collect plants for the manufacturers 
of perfumes to collect the Woodruff in the woods about Tring: 
several hundreds of loads, each as large as a man can carry, will 
never be missed here. We did not notice Paris quadrifolia, 
which does grow in Beech-woods about Hemel Hempstead ; but 
we noticed plenty of Mercurialis perennis, which is associated 
with the Paris in a wood near Boxmoor. The Orchids were also 
very scarce. Neotiia Nidus-avis was the only scarce one visible. 
Orchis maculata was partly in flower; and O. conopsea was in 
