48 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



finished ; for the histoty of the Bath valley, as seen 

 from Claverton Down, is, as I said before, the history 

 of all England, visibly. Epitomised in tangible realities 

 before one's! very eyes. 



However, I haVe not come out to-day to hunt for 

 old' relics among the works of Caer Badon, or to trace 

 the curious bends and angles iaf Wansdyke. A far 

 older, and stranger chapter of our history than any of 

 these is unfolded by the little wayside weed which I 

 have here in my botanical case ; and it was to find 

 this very commonplace and uninteresting-looking 

 plant that I have conie out this morning'. For the 

 >veed is the hairy wood-spurge, and Claverton Down 

 is the only place in' Great Britain where that parti- 

 cular kind of spurge still lingers on. I have got my 

 British Florai safe here in my satchel ; and now I am 

 going to sit d6wn on the slope of Wansdyke and 

 make quite sure that my plamt really tallies exactly 

 with Dr. Benthlim's description ; for if it actually does, 

 then I shall have the pleasure of knowing that I hold 

 in my hand one of the few genuine links which yet 

 unite us with a very distant past — a past compared 

 with which the days when Wansdyke was built, or 

 eyeii when Little Solisbury was fortified, seem com- 

 paratively, recent. If this is in fa:ct the hairy wood- 

 spurge,' it and its ancestors have been growing here 



See fig. 13. 



