272 Botanizing at OahsJwtt Eeaili. 



which, on a lesser hill, we stand and shout to the heath and the sky, 

 and our admiration and our shouts are lost over such an expanse 

 of open country that there is no echo. Below runs the dark 

 line of firs, which leading onward to the wilds, seems inter- 

 minable, and over their heads and through their few thin narrow 

 gaps we catch sight of hills similar to those which skirt the 

 horizon elsewhere. On the north, the fir woods darken into 

 gigantic blotches, and seem at last to shrink away in the dis- 

 tance, as if in that direction they purposed to encompass the 

 world. Eastward lies London, and we can just discern the 

 cloudy canopy that overhangs it, as if it were blessed of heaven 

 with a precious fall of dew, though we know but too well what 

 that cloud is ; it is the coal smoke that would kill all this lichen 

 and heather in a week were it wafted across them as it hovers 

 there to kill mankind instead. Now we can just catch sight of 

 the towers of the Crystal Palace peeping over the line of a 

 slight depression in the dark horizon, and as the eye travels 

 towards the south, we see the lovely fir woods of Esher ; then 

 farther to the south the lands swell up richly and roundly, as if 

 Dame Nature had bared her full bosom to the heavens to show 

 that it still has the beauty of youth and the plenty of maturity. 

 This grand swell drops down, and immediately another and a 

 nearer hill rises, and where the slopes of the two approximate 

 in the line of vision, their conjuncture forms a broad letter "V 

 on the horizon. That letter V gives the key to Box Hill, and 

 from thence, as the eye travels towards the west, a glimpse of 

 Guildford is obtained, and beyond that, when the atmosphere 

 is clear, the view opens far into Hampshire, and little gray dots 

 and indigo lines, and dust-like gleams of gray and brown, inch- 

 oate the hamlets and woods and chalky hills of one of the love- 

 liest counties of England. The air was balmy, the sun warm, 

 and the barometer high when we started on our journey; here 

 we found the air so bleak and the breeze so brisk, that one of 

 the two had to light a pipe to ward off a twinge of tic, and when 

 this was done we rolled about, and friend, the elder and more 

 serious of the two, could only be brought back to botany by the 

 question, " Does the dodder ever make roots in the earth ?" 

 Thereupon friend began to dig, and at last turned up a huge 

 bunch of peat, lichen, ling, and dodder, and with great dexterity 

 proceeded to anatomize the mass, the result being that a single 

 thread of dodder might bo traced almost any^ distance, round 

 and round, in and out, up and down, and by a hundred true- 

 lover's knots, through the wiry ling; it could never be traced to 

 the earth, but it was frequently found to have thrust its suckers 

 and formed clusters of those red bulbous points among the 

 lichen, though no true root could be found. I can remember 

 finding the roots of dodder twenty years ago, but that was early 



