298 Gilpin's forest sceneby. 



Of all this undergrowtli I know but one plant 

 that is disagreeable, and that is the bramble. "We 

 sometimes see it with effect, scrawling along the 

 fragments of a rock, or running among the rub- 

 bish of a ruin, and, though it is, even then, a coarse 

 appendage, I should not wish to remove it 

 from landscape. But as a pendent plant it has no 

 beauty. It does not hang carelessly, twisting 

 round every support, like the hop and others of 

 the creeping tribe, but forms one stiff, unpliant 

 curve. Nor has it any foliage to recommend it. 

 In other pendent plants the leaf is generally 

 luxuriant, and hangs loosely in rich festoons ; but, 

 in the suckers of a bramble, the leaf is harsh, 

 shrivelled, and discoloured. In short, it is a plant 

 which should not, I think, presume in landscape 

 farther than has just been allowed : it has little 

 beauty in itself, and harmonizes, as little, with any- 

 thing around it ; and may be characterized as the 

 most insignificant of vegetable reptiles. 



We are constrained to put in a plea for the Bramble. Far 

 from regarding it as ' the most insignificant of vegetable 

 reptiles,' we confess to a fondness for it, born, perhaps, of 

 sunny recollections of schoolboy days and ' blackberry- 



