98 
WARWICKSHIRE STOUR VALLEY AND ITS FLORA. 
destiny, would feel that its path was upward towards something 
not yet reached, and would be stirred, as man is stirred, with 
golden hopes and irrepressible aspirations. 
What then is it that man hopes for ? Passing by all 
lesser hopes and wishes, what is that which, if he could reach 
it, would completely satisfy him ? 
Here part company two schools of thought. A thinker of 
one type will tell you that what man longs for is happiness; 
give him perfect happiness and he is for ever content. The 
other school repudiates this doctrine ; maintains that there is 
a hope beyond the hope of happiness ; that this highest and 
subtlest aspiration exists in all branches of the human family, 
but is strongest and clearest in the noblest souls; that it is 
not a desire to have anything, or to feel anything, but simply 
to be whatever the imagination pictures as the completest 
development of humanity. I take my stand with the latter 
school, and I think it of vital consequence to the progress of 
civilisation that the pursuit of happiness as the end and aim 
of life should be denounced and made as unpopular in theory 
as I believe it is actually untrue in fact. 
NOTES ON THE WARWICKSHIRE STOUR VALLEY 
AND ITS FLORA. 
BY JAMES E. BAGNALL, A.L.S. 
(Continued from page 71.) 
In many parts of the district the fences are of stone often 
loosely put togtlier without cement. These loosely constructed 
walls are rarely the habitats of flowering plants, unless it be 
here and there the tiny whitlow grass, but the mosses, content 
with a thinner soil, not unfrequently spread their velvety mantle 
over these otherwise bare places, and we see beautiful masses 
of Hypnum cupressiforme , H. rutabulum , Homalothecium 
sericeum, and rarely the creeping stems of Leucodon sciuroides, 
and the coping-stones are frequently covered by great masses 
of Barbula intermedia and rural is, or the majus form of Bryum 
capillare, or pretty little cushions of Grimmia apocarpa and 
G. pulvinata, serried ranks of Orthotrichum saxatile , silver- 
tipped tufts of 0. diaphanurn , and the ubiquitous Barbula 
muralis. But in the villages these walls are usually cemented 
and capped with mud, and then there is often an abundant 
crop of Futtia lanceolata , P. intermedia, F. cavifolia, Tortilla 
aloides and ambigua, and rarely T. rigula. Of flowering plants 
everywhere we are reminded of the advent of Spring by the 
