44 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



11. 

 THE ROMANCE OF A WA YSIDE WEED. 



You will not find many pleasanter or breezier walks 

 in England than this open stretch of Claverton Down : 

 certainly you will find very few with more varied 

 interest of every conceivable sort for every cultivated 

 mind. The air is fresh and laden from the brine of 

 the Atlantic and the Gulf Stream ; the clear wind is 

 blowing straight from seaward,- not keen and dry from 

 the Eastern plains, but soft and pure from a thousand 

 leagues of uninterrupted ocean ; and the view over 

 the broken dale of Avon, where it cuts its way in a 

 veritable gorge through the high barrier of the Bath 

 oolite, stretches for miles over one of the loveliest and 

 greenest valleys in all our lovely green England. 

 More than that — the whole history of Britain is visibly 

 unfolded before my very eyes. That bald roundish 

 hill to the right, with its smooth summit artificially 

 levelled, and its sides planed down into a long glacis, 

 is Little Solisbury ; and Little Solisbury, as its name 

 clearly shows, is the very oldest Bath of all. For it is 



