constitute a couch such as that described by Sir Walter

Scott :

And again,

"Before the heath had lost the dew,
This morn a couch was pull'd for you,

On yonder mountain's purple head."

"The stranger's bed

Was there of mountain heather spread."

Cabins are also thatched with it, and the walls of the cottages are often made of alternate layers of heather and a kind of mortar. As fuel it serves well, and it is said to yield a yellow dye, which I am told is at present used by the cloth-manufacturers of Yorkshire. Moreover, in England the sprigs of the heather are constantly made into brooms or besoms, which are very serviceable. As food for moor game and grouse, the heather is almost essential, and it is only where this plant will grow that these birds can be preserved. The red deer also crops the young shoots of the heather. Bees extract honey from the flowers, which though dark in colour, is very rich in flavour.

I have seen the heather, and, indeed, many species of heath, prettily used as a border for flower-beds in gardens. Sir W. Hooker suggested it, and has carried it out at Kew. Accustomed as we are in the southern districts to see the heath plants only as a low shrub, a foot or two in height, we are surprised to read of

"Heather black that waved so high,

It held the copse in rivalry."

Yet so it is, and in certain wild and peaty districts it may be found quite tall enough to justify this description.

THE HOLLY.

ILEX AQUIFOLIUM.

THIS plant belongs to the small natural family Aquifoliaceæ, and is the only British representative of the family. It seems hardly needful to describe so well-known and favourite a tree, associated as it is with the happiest days of childhood, with Christmasday gatherings and merry-makings, with joyous faces and warm hearts, while to some of us, perhaps, who have passed the sunshine of life, its bright green leaves and red berries may call up memories of the companions of past years, now passed away, never more to share in our joys or our sorrows. Familiar as we all are with the red berries of the Holly, we may not have seen its flowers, for they blossom when all nature is bright, and are overlooked amidst their more showy and attractive neighbours. They grow closely round the stem, and are white and wax-like, opening in May and June. The bright shining green leaves are armed with sharp prickly teeth, but the upper ones on a bush are frequently smooth. This circumstance the poet Southey impresses on the memory in his charming lines on the Holly Tree,—

"Below a circling fence its leaves are seen,
Wrinkled and keen.

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But as they grow where nothing is to fear,

Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear."

The tendency to produce these prickly points renders the Holly peculiarly fit for hedges, and when Dutch horticulture prevailed in England, such hedges were not unfrequent.

"A hedge of holly, thieves that would invade,
Repulses like a growing palisade."

The celebrated John Evelyn had such a hedge at Say's Court, four hundred feet long, nine feet high, and five feet broad, which he planted at the suggestion of Peter the Great, who resided at his house while he worked in the Deptford Dockyard. In his Diary he asks, "Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing sight of the kind than such an impregnable hedge, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves, the taller standards at orderly distances blushing with their natural coral?" The Holly is a very slow-growing tree, and its timber is amongst the hardest of white woods; it is much used by Turners, and especially in the manufacture of Tunbridge ware.

THE SPRING GENTIAN.

GENTIANA VERNA.

THIS is one of the brightest ornaments of our northern districts. It belongs to the family Gentianaceæ, and to a genus which flourishes especially in Alpine and Arctic regions. This pretty little Gentian is, however, sometimes found in warm mild districts. I have met with it in the Isle of Wight, on Shanklin Downs. Bitterness is a characteristic of the whole family, and this principle seems to have something to do with the bright blue colour of the blossoms, for the brighter the hue the more bitter the taste. Our little spring Gentian has a perennial leafy stock, densely tufted, often spreading to four or five inches in diameter, with ovate or oblong leaves. The flowerstems are simple and numerous, sometimes so short as to give the flowers the appearance of being seated on the leaves; sometimes they are an inch or two in length, and bearing one bright blue terminal flower. The corolla is tube-like, nearly an inch long, with five ovate lobes, and smaller two-cleft ones between them. The bitter principle of all the gentians is valuable as a medicinal agent.

G. Nivalis, the little Snow Gentian, grows on our loftiest mountains in Scotland and Wales, but is far better known as a native of the Alps and Pyrenees.

BUCKBEAN, OR MARSH TREFOIL.

MENYANTHES TRIFOLIATA.

THE Buckbean belongs also to the family of Gentians-Gentianacea. It is a beautiful aquatic herb, and is found in wet bogs and shallow ponds all over Great Britain. The stem is short, creeping, or floating, with a dense tuft of leaves, consisting each of a long stalk, sheathing at the base, and three obovate or oblong leaflets, one to one and a half inches long. The flowers are white, tinged externally with pink, in an oblong raceme on a peduncle of from six inches to a foot long, proceeding from the base of the tuft of leaves. The corolla is deeply five-lobed, and fringed on the inside with white filaments. of our native plants exceed this in beauty. In the fresh-water aquarium it is a beautiful object, and may easily be preserved in this artificial condition for some time. In common with all its family, the Marsh Trefoil abounds in an intensely bitter quality, which has frequently been used medicinally. Withering says that the leaves have been used during a scarcity of hops as a substitute for them in brewing beer.

None