Salt Marshes and their Inhabitants.- 27 



" Half way down 

 Hang3 one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade : 

 Methinks he seems no bigger than his head." 



More showy than these is Aster tripolium, which, with its 

 mauve petals and brilliant orange disc, does the best it can to 

 lend some liveliness to its chosen haunts, 



" Making a sunshine in a shady place." 



Some of the Arenarice, too, we may find (A. marina, or A. pep- 

 tides), not without a quiet beauty of their own, but certainly 

 less attractive than their rarer neighbour the Sea Lavender 

 (Statice limonium), which, with its beautiful spikes of blue and 

 white, is after all not so lovely a flower as its near relative, the 

 common Thrift (Armeria maritima). Thrift flourishes no- 

 where so well as on cliffs overlooking the sea. The Pre- 

 raphaelite artist could scarcely find a more delightful study 

 than a luxuriant bed of this plant carpeting the sides of a 

 rugged rock, its glow of tender crimson intermixed with the 

 beautiful white of the Sea Catchfly (Silene maritima) . But we 

 find it likewise growing freely in the salt marsh, on the 

 mountain-top far inland, and under cultivation in our gardens. 

 It seems, indeed, to be one of the most hardy and accom- 

 modating of our indigenous plants. We might much prolong 

 this list of flowering plants peculiar to, or very common 

 inhabitants of, salt marshes, but must dismiss them with the 

 mere mention of the genera Atriplex and Plantago, both of 

 which will commonly be found represented. The Cryptogamic 

 flora, however, deserves further attention. In the spongier 

 parts of the marsh we find the roots and rhizomes of the 

 grasses matted together by a dense growth of Yaucheria, one 

 of the green Algas of a genus which inhabits indiscriminately 

 fresh, brackish, and salt water. The plant puts on many 

 different forms and habits, according to the kind of locality in 

 which it grows, and many of these varieties have been elevated 

 to the rank of species on very insufficient grounds. Yaucheria 

 is certainly one of the least beautiful, perhaps also one of the 

 least interesting of its class. It consists of branched tubular 

 filaments, filled with a green endochrome, and without articu- 

 lations. The filaments are mostly inextricably matted together, 

 forming a dense cushion, so that the base of the tuft being- 

 excluded from the air and buried in mud, becomes yellow and 

 gradually decays, while the upper extremities, continuing their 

 growth, are of a deep bluish -green colour. The only situation 

 in which we have ever seen any member of the genus put forth 

 much pretension to beauty, is on the sides of perpendicular 

 rocks, where it is nourished by the spray of waterfalls or 

 runlets. In such places its green velvet fleece, often many 



