Botanizing at Oalcshott Heath. 269 



elegant of alpiues. Apargia avtumnalis was here also in 

 several forms, its gay yellow starry flowers sparkling like gold 

 amid its tufts of dark green deeply-lobed leaves. Senecio 

 sylvaticus, the mountain groundsel, and S. tenuifolius, the 

 hoary ragwort, were scattered sparingly on this bank, and an 

 unmistakeable tuft of emerald green proved to be the pretty 

 Sagina procumbens, the properest of all plants except Spergula 

 saginoides for fairies to dance upon. Wapping Dock opens in 

 some sort of way, very mysteriously, on the heath. You have 

 to wind about a sort of geographical corkscrew of lanes, banks, 

 and bits of waste ; but it is impossible to miss the way, for 

 you have before you a prospect of pines flanking a broken 

 waste as black as the shores of the Tyne in the neighbourhood 

 of Newcastle. Of course we make our way in the direction of 

 this uninviting scene, and presently forget its solemnity by 

 tumbling into the midst of a wilderness of brake and black- 

 berries. Nature is very kind to botanists. We see before us 

 a savage wilderness, but we enter it by way of a lovely dell, 

 where the brake rises like palms over our heads, the dwarf 

 furze, TJlex nanus, is smothered with its golden flowers, and the 

 blackberries present their sooty clusters, all glistening with 

 ripeness, and we taste the sweets of civilization before encoun- 

 tering the bitters of solitude. There is a weird wildness in the 

 scene we are entering upon ; behind us are a few cottages and 

 farms, before us miles of silent waste, populated to the extent 

 of about one squirrel, one lean heifer, and one stag-beetle to 

 the square mile. Rabbits and foxes appear to abound, for their 

 burrows are plentiful ; but as they are all in their subterranean 

 retreats, they cannot count among the daylight population. 

 But we are very pleasantly invited onward by the configuration 

 of the country. Right before us lies a deep dry gully, forming 

 the winter drain and boundary to a broad belt of pine and 

 hornbeam that stretches away in front, and only ceases at the 

 vanishing point in the landscape. Erorn this gully the land 

 rises rapidly to the right and carries the eye upward to the 

 summit of a dark cone, almost as regularly formed as a sugar- 

 loaf, but more obtuse in proportions. The sides of this gully 

 would suffice us for more than one day ; s botanizing. The soil 

 is white sand, deepening into black peat on the surface, and 

 the vegetation is such as we find only in connection with 

 sand, and peat, and pure air, and utter neglect by man. 

 Nature has dressed these wilds in her own way, and now their 

 principal decorations are huge and curious fungi. On every 

 hand along the course of the gully and down in its dry bed, 

 they are scattered with wonderful profusion. In some places 

 you can scarcely step without crushing their flaky heads and 

 pulpy stems, and here and there some monstrous Bovista or 



