XXIV DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLE OF MAN 
from Peel to Fleshwick, with their flowery swards of squill, 
thrift, and campion, their ivied and fern-decorated recesses, 
their dark caves filled with clear green water, their white 
pebbled strands and pinnacled stacks, are unequalled in 
the island for beauty and interest, backed as they often are 
by the steep and lofty slopes (clad with heath, gorse, and 
bracken, and broken by crags and stony screes) of the 
western end of the mountain-range. An extent of high 
sheer cliff, however, is not common, the craggy scarps 
constantly alternating with slopes of grass and boulders, 
stony debris, and little damp clefts full of profuse vegeta- 
tion. The sheerest and barest pieces of sea-cliff in Man 
are Spanish Head, parts of the west edge of the Calf, 
Bradda, and the north end of Bay Stacka. 
All along the rocky margin of the sea there is usually a 
selvage of uncultivated land, both botanically and ornitho- 
logically an interesting feature. Here, where there is a 
cover of brambles or gorse, are found Blackbirds, Stonechats, 
and Linnets, and in their season Wheatears; here the 
Meadow and the Rock Pipits meet; its short, firm turf, 
rich according to the season with thrift, bird’s-foot lotus, 
and the autumnal composites, is a favourite feeding ground 
for Jackdaws and Choughs, and Partridges shelter when 
the fern is thick. Seaward it merges in the grey broken 
rocks, at whose feet the sea laps in long shining un- 
dulations, and breaks in white foam, its predominant 
murmur always filling the air; landward the high earthen 
fences, walling off the cultivated fields, are sweet with 
thyme, and bright with a succession of flowers, white bed- 
straw, tormentil, and burnet-rose, English stonecrop and 
Hypericum pulchrum, sheep-scabious and harebell. 
The northern sand-brows merge in rock about two miles 
south of Kirk Michael, and thence to Peel extends a 
picturesque and varied line of crag and creek, with many 
