215 
SOME 
WORD-PICTURES TAKEN FROM NATURE. 
~ Cr cE, MEA. 
Vicar of St. Olave's, Vork ; President of the Conchological Section of the Yi oT ee 
Union; and Vice-President of the Vorkshire Philosophical Socie 
Descriptions of natural scenery, whether in prose or a have 
nearly always disappointed me. They are not, as a rule, perfectly 
accurate, and are consequently unsatisfactory to a close observer. 
The explanation of this is simple—they have been written from 
memory. They are the records of ¢mpressions, not observations. 
These short word-pictures have just this one merit—they were taken 
out of doors and on the spot ; they are verbal photographs. 
APRIL 261TH, 1890. IN SALTBURN GLEN. 
Above, the north-west wind sweeps fiercely over the fields, but 
down here in the deep glen, it scarcely waves the slender wood- 
anemones, nor stirs the ivy that clings to the alders. All the steep 
bank before me is a pale green mist—young leaves of hawthorn and 
willow and honeysuckle. Near at hand the ground is covered with 
dog-mercury, with here and there a tuft of the great drooping wood- 
sedge or a pale pink spike of water colt’s-foot. Behind me, a low 
swamp is all on fire with the broad golden blossoms of Caltha—suns 
that almost shame the soft moonshine of the coy primroses which 
nestle among the dead leaves and dry stalks of last year. Here and 
there a blue eye of the wood forget-me-not peeps forth, only 
beginning to open; but up above, through the branches of the 
flowering ashes and the still sleeping oaks, the whin is in all its full 
glory, and its peculiar scent comes sifting now and again along the 
air. That graceful grass, Me/ica uniflora, has shot up its green 
Spears through the fingered anemone leaves, but the panicle scarcely 
appears. Adoxa, shiest of all shy flowers, reveals its Tee 
crown of flowers where the shelter is closest, and on a damp a 
Shady bank, spreads a reach of golden Saxifrage. The alder tree 
on which I sit and write has fallen across the noisy stream ; its trunk 
is held in a perfect network of ivy branches, and on this the silver- 
grey lichens have laid their intricate lacework. Near the root a few 
fronds of Polypody have found a precarious home. 
Sep. 2oth, 1890. Danes’ Dyke (NorTH END). 
I am lying by a stile under shelter of the great grassy end of 
Danes’ Dyke, a fresh south-east breeze blowing, a warm and sunny 
wind, putting a thousand little muses crests upon the ripples of 
July 18or. 
