218 SWALEDALE PLANTS. 
whose quiet grassy graves unscrupulous science rummages to fill an 
antiquary’s cabinet or stock a provincial museum. There is no more 
pathetic picture in the universe than man’s early struggle with 
nature—the slow-developing triumph of brain-force over brute-force 
That it is no very long time since wild animals constituted a danger 
to human life, I am reminded by the sight of Flixton Wold just 
Opposite me, where once stood a refuge for the escape of travellers 
pursued by wolves. 
Beyond the last soft swell of the hill, the giant cliffs of Speeton 
rise, a ghostly line of precipices. The sun will fall upon them in the 
evening, and then they will shine forth bright and clear; now in 
shade, they appear strangely dim and mysterious, almost unsubstantial, 
and as if they might melt away like a cloud; not like the barrier 
that even resisted the onward march of the gient glacier of the North 
Sea, and turned its course aside till it met with the lower ground of 
Flamborough Head. The hard stern realities of life sometimes 
conceal their true character as effectually as these massive cliffs, and 
then surprise us by all at once revealing their inflexible rigidity. 
Almost at my feet rises a crumbling ruin, as eloquent of human 
perishableness as yonder cliffs of Nature’s endurance. A fragment, 
I understand, this old building is of the Ever’s family mansion ; its 
former extent is proved by masses of ruin and the foundations of 
walls, now mantled by the thick turf. An elder-tree has rooted 
deeply in the stone-work of a narrow window. And while its fibres 
are loosening the mortar and preparing the stones for their fall, its 
spreading branches seem to proclaim and predict Nature’s triumph 
over this old relic of human greatness. , 
I have oner the ve courteous 
para on my me by Mr. Whitwell, which appeared in ‘ The Naturalist for 
Oct. 1890, ut - an n equ gee gt a letter to almost exactly the same ag fey 
i e ‘ 
ct 
a 
hat my critics are right and I am — as i a some of the species called in 
i i ten 
I still cherish the belief that I c pada Went ified and recorded the remainder. 
bai Whitwell's letter will do eee by showing others what to look for, and also 
ow to criticise when occasion for criticism arises. —J. G. GoopCHILD, Edinburg: 
twee 6th, 1891. 
—_—_—— 
Naturalist, 
