146 GLAUCUS; OE, 



which Mr. Johns has so charmingly described in his 

 " Week at the Lizard Point," yet an average cliff, 

 with its carpeting of pink thrift and of bladder 

 catchfly, and Lady's finger, and elegant grasses, most 

 of them peculiar to the sea-marge, is often a very 

 lovely flower-bed. 



Not merely interesting, too, but brilliant in their 

 vegetation are sandhills ; and the seemingly desolate 

 dykes and banks of salt marshes will yield many a 

 curious plant, which you may neglect if you will ; 

 but lay to your account the having to repent your 

 neglect hereafter, when, finding out too late what a 

 pleasant study botany is, you search in vain for 

 curious forms over which you trod every day, in 

 crossing flats which seemed to you utterly ugly and 

 uninteresting, but which the good God was watching 

 as carefully as He did the pleasant hills inland : 

 perhaps even more carefully ; for the uplands He has 

 completed, and handed over to man, that he may 

 dress and keep them : but the tide-flats below are 

 still unfinished, dry land in the process of creation, 

 to which every tide is adding the elements of fertility, 



