26 THE BRITISH ISLES. 



stretches. It is eloquently described by Mr. Watson* us " an undulating plain of 

 meadows, pastures, and cultivated fields, separated from each other by hawthorn 

 hedges or stone walls, and thickly interspersed with parks, woods, gardens, towns, 

 and high-roads, altogether betokening a climate where man may attain a high state 

 of civilisation, and live for ease and pleasure, as well as for laborious occupations. 

 It is the region where the trees flourish, and the flowers, rendered classic by our poets, 

 bloom, and is not less loved by many of us, because their very commonness has 

 made them familiar by vernacular names, without the aid of botanical systems or 

 a dead language. It is, ^jrw excellence, the land of the daisy and cowslip, the oak 

 and hawthorn, the hazel copse and the woodbhie bower : the region of fruits and 

 flowers, where the trees of the forest unite a graceful beauty with strength and 

 majesty, and where the fresh greensward of the pasture, commingling with the 

 yellow waves of the corn-field, tells to us that here at least 



' The cheek of Spring 

 Smiles in the kiss of Autuinn.' 



" Black swampy moors, such as deface so large a portion of the next, or barren, 

 region, are in this of comparatively rare occurrence and small extent. The downs 

 and chases in earl}^ spring are covered with the countless blossoms of the golden 

 gorse, or the more gaudy broom, and empurpled with the different kinds of heath 

 during summer and autumn. Little, indeed, as we may regard these shrubs, in 

 Sweden and North Russia the gorse is prized as we prize the myrtles of the 

 south ; and our common heaths are unknown over a wide extent of Europe. The 

 oak, ash, yew, hornbeam, alders, elms, poplars, and willows are the principal native 

 trees of this region ; the first four gradually yielding to the pine, white birch, and 

 mountain ash as we approach the higher portion, forming the upland zone. The 

 beech, sycamore, and Spanish chestnut have been introduced, and the first two now 

 spring up self-sown and readily. A climate in which the heat of summer is rarely 

 excessive, and where rain and clouds are so frequent, is unadopted to the spon- 

 taneous growth of fruits, and we accordingly find our native productions poor in 

 the extreme. The wild cherry, crab, bullace, and native pear are the arborescent 

 fruit trees. The raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, sloe, hazel nut, hip and haw, 

 form a very indifferent catalogue for our shrubby and herbaceous fruit plants. The 

 cranberry, bilberry, and crowberrj', with the fruit of the mountain ash and juniper, 

 common to this and the barren region, are greatly surpassed by one fruit, almost 

 peculiar to the latter, viz. the cloudberry. Lastly, the different kinds of goose- 

 berries and currants cultivated in our gardens are probably derived from species 

 indigenous to Britain, and are very apt to spring up in our woods and hedges from 

 translated seeds." 



"When we leave these smiling lowlands, so characteristic of England, we pass 

 through an upland affording excellent pasturage for sheep and cattle, and finally 

 enter the barren tracts of moorlands and peat bogs, which cover a wide area in the 

 Highlands of Scotland, no less than in the mountain regions of England and Wales. 



* " Distribution of British Plants." 



