FERNY COMBES. 
21 
The valley is wild in the extreme. The mixture 
of grey rocks, fine trees, turf, moist meadows where 
the grass grows tall and green, and the rocky mur- 
muring stream, overhung by trees and fringed by 
luxuriant ferns dipping into the water, is a sight 
not lightly to be passed by or easily to be for- 
gotten. 
This Vale of Trentishoe well deserves to have a 
long summer day devoted to it : it should be de- 
scended from the bridge to the sea, — a rough walk, 
for the road is strewn with grey stone similar to 
those which in places entirely cover the hillside, — 
and ascended by the road that runs by the side of 
the stream, as far as the Parsonage. This road, at 
certain seasons of the year, is the haunt of innu- 
merable butterfiies of the larger and handsomer 
sorts ; and among the stones that lie thick under 
the oak-trees, the Orpine, or Livelong, a large red 
Sedmn, grows in great profusion. In the charcoal 
clearings in the forests of Germany this plant 
abounds, but it is not common in England. The 
Orpine makes a pretty garden plant, in which bees 
take especial delight ; and from its peculiarity of 
keeping alive a very long time out of the ground, 
is not a bad thing to take as a reminiscence of this 
lovely spot. 
Erom the Parsonage to the cliffs a narrow turf- 
