104 
THE FERN PARADISE. 
top; drinking in with that inexpressibly acute 
sense of pleasure which the jaded town dweller 
can alone experience in its full perfection, the 
enjoyments which are alone to be found where— 
- Boon Nature scatters, free and wild, 
Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child ! ’ 
From Totnes to Newton Abbot; then on to 
Teigngrace and Bovey, and thence away by Lust- 
leigh, to the borders of Dartmoor and Moreton- 
hampstead. Following this route, we one day 
made for the moors, in order to explore the ferny 
borders of Fingle Bridge, of Lustleigh Cleave, and 
of Horseman’s Steps. It is, indeed, a grand 
series of views which that route presents ; and a 
great and glorious wealth of Ferns, in varying 
hues of exquisite green, will reward a careful 
search. 
The line from Totnes to Newton runs through 
a series of deep cuttings through the hills. Now 
the high sides of the cuttings shut out the sky: 
now a tunnel shows that the sudden rise in the 
hills, which lay in the path of the railway, had 
made an open cutting impossible. As we are 
