THE CHEDDAR PINK. 
io 7 
“ Mr. Arnold once told me that he took special pains with 
the references to plants in Merope ; and they are very correct. 
See, for instance, the Speech of AUpytus, pages 45-50, and the 
Chorus at page 96 of Vol. III. ; but there is no passage in the 
play which can be very conveniently detached from its setting 
for purposes of quotation. 
“ In Empedocles w r e have the well-known lines which may 
fitly conclude these extracts : — 
“ ‘ The track winds down to the clear stream, 
To cross the sparkling shallows ; there 
The cattle love to gather, on their way 
To the high mountain-pastures, and to stay. 
Till the rough cow-herds drive them past, 
Knee-deep in the cool ford ; for ’tis the last 
Of all the woody, high, well-watered dells 
On Etna ; and the beam 
Of noon is broken there by chestnut-boughs 
Down its steep verdant sides ; the air 
Is freshen’d by the leaping stream, which throws 
Eternal showers of spray on the moss’d roots 
Of trees, and veins of turf, and long dark shoots 
Of ivy-plants, and fragrant hanging bells 
Of hyacinths, and on late anemonies, 
That muffle its wet banks ; but glade, 
And stream, and sward, and chestnut-trees. 
End here ; Etna beyond, in the broad glare 
Of the hct noon, without a shade, 
Slope behind slope, up to the peak, lies bare ; 
The peak, round which the white clouds play.’ 
“ A careful reader will find other passages, which will remind 
him how constant a lover of flowers was the poet we lost two 
years ago — a poet whose fame will, I think, be greater with 
posterity than it has been with a generation only too apt to con- 
fuse poetry with another very different, though no doubt highly 
respectable, thing — namely ‘ thinking in verse.’ 
“In this letter I have only, in obedience to your commands, 
put together the most characteristic notices of flowers and plants 
I can find in Mr. Arnold’s volumes, in the hope that they may 
win a few additional students for some of the wisest and loveliest 
compositions in the English language.” 
M. E. Grant Duff. 
THE CHEDDAR PINK. 
NE by one the localities for the rarer plants of England 
are fast diminishing. At one time they are threatened 
by the heartless rapacity of the “cheap tripper”; at 
another by the unwise advertisement of a “find” and 
the consequent incursions of the ruthless plant-dealer; and again 
by the carrying out of quarrying operations and the setting up 
of the “ devilish enginery ” which accompanies them ; not to 
