280 Botanizing at Oaksliott Heath. 



was not a breeze moving among their cloudy tops — the 

 oppressive silence, for no bird whistled, no rabbit rustled, no 

 beetle hummed. There was not one bright flower anywhere 

 visible, and from out of the darkness of the shadows and the 

 deep hues of holly and pine, these sixteen great disks of 

 dazzling vermillion shot forth with the brightness and dis- 

 tinctness of the red lights seen at the head of an advancing 

 railway train emerging from a tunnel at midnight. What 

 huge things they were, with stout stems dotted with purplish 

 red, with a network of greenish-orange pores beneath, 

 that under a lens had the appearance of honeycomb, and their 

 grand caps showing such a blaze of red, deepening here to 

 purple, and there lighting up with a stain of orange, the most 

 magnificent display of colour, I verily believe, it has ever been 

 my lot to behold. Shall I say that mosses and lichens abound 

 here ? Of that the botanical reader may be quite sure, and as. 

 the season for collecting such things is near at hand, musco- 

 logists who read this work are by this hint forewarned and 

 forearmed. I believe it will be found that the route taken in 

 this journey presents as great a variety of mosses and lichens 

 as any similar extent of land within at least a hundred miles, 

 of London. 



Our tour may be said to have ended at the Black Ponds.. 

 We retraced our steps to Harbrook, then crossed over the hill,, 

 and made our way towards a white farm-house, which may be 

 seen from the highest point of the common. Beside that farm- 

 house stand two ancient elms, respecting which I have not been 

 able to obtain any particulars worth publishing. The largest of 

 the two is a mere shell ; the bark alone remains, but it carries 

 a fine head of recent growth, the original head having long 

 since disappeared. When in its fall glory it must have covered 

 a sufficient space of ground for a military camp, as may be 

 judged by these measurements : — At one foot from the ground 

 its circumference is forty-four feet eight inches ; at four feet from 

 the ground thirty-one feet four inches. We did not measure it 

 at the ground line, but it cannot be less than seventy feet there. 

 The companion is the handsomest tree of the two, but is con- 

 siderably smaller. Our way lies now along a hedgerow to the 

 south-east corner of the common, where it is intersected by 

 Copsam Lane. Under this hedgerow there is a grand display 

 of British fenis, among them red-stemmed and red-leaved 

 varieties of hus/rca filix mas, and plenty of lady-ferns. This 

 Copsam Lane brings us to another part of OakshotfHcath, and by 

 continuing the road we soon arrive at the school-house where 

 Ave turned nil' to the left at starting, in order to reach the heath 

 )>y that route 



It was a long and pleasant task to turn out all the specimens 



