Botanizing at Oakshott Heath. 277 



growth that you are puzzled for a moment to know wliat they 

 are. Lastrea oreopteris showing its delicate visage through 

 fringes of all the wild and delicate things that grow on damp 

 banks, and amongst them Equisetum telmateia in the wildest 

 luxuriance, ready to furnish any number of whipcords, umbrella 

 frames, and skeletons of wigwams for the fairies, and very 

 elegant and indescribable tufts of herbage for the conservatory 

 (at least in ours) next season, for we basketed roots, while 

 friend pressed a good specimen in the vasculum. This water- 

 course presently joins another which crosses its path, and the 

 two form one, which take their way somehow towards Harbrook 

 Common. At the junction of these brooks there is an extrava- 

 gant display of vegetable luxuriance. Of course, as the soil 

 here is a fat loam, the pretty peltate -leaved Hydrocotyle vul- 

 garis is the prevailing weed. That makes a pretty beginning. 

 Now add to it Veronica beccubanga, still in full bloom ; Veronica 

 officinalis, full of bloom ; Viola palustris, with leaves as large 

 as crown pieces; Callitriclie vema and 0. autumnalis forming 

 emerald green mats, in the swiftest and brightest current of 

 the brawling brook ; Myosotis jpalustris in plenty on the mar- 

 gins, hiding the mud with myriads of seedling plants, and 

 Juncus uliginosus in a viviparous form, and looking at first 

 sight exactly like Spergula nodosa, to which it has no more 

 real resemblance than to a grape-vine or banana. 



The united watercourses would serve to indicate the way to 

 Harbrook Common if needful. But no direction is needed, for 

 there it rises bluff before you, a natter cone than that we 

 traversed on the heath, and much more common-like, with 

 great tufts of furze looking very black upon the tawny ground- 

 work of sand and gravel. For the first time in all our journey 

 we caught sight of a, man, who presently disappears over the 

 summit of the cone, and is afterwards seen by us in the cha- 

 racter of a furze-cutter. We soon gain the summit and sit 

 down on real grass turf amidst huge knolls of furze, TJlex 

 Uurojoceus, and discuss the sandwiches and ale which Mrs. 

 Brown Bear has so liberally and carefully provided us with. 

 After such a tramp what a flavour there is in round of beef, 

 even bread is a delicacy ; and if a man cannot then thank God 

 for making everything beautiful in its season he must be " fit for 

 stratagems and spoils," and properly a companion for the bats 

 and owls. At Harbrook Common you are at one of the meet- 

 ing points of civilization and savagery. To the east, the birth- 

 place of refinement, are half a dozen farms ; to the west the 

 pine woods continue, and in that direction we hurry away. 

 Once more we traverse ground covered with lichens and 

 calluna, but there is no dodder, and true ericas are scarce. 

 Geologists may study the substratum, for there are some consi- 



VOL. IV. — NO. iv. u 



