sandy tracts, which we might naturally imagine would now be parched up,
are in full glory. The _erica tetralix_, or bell-heath, the most
beautiful of our indigenous species, is now in bloom, and has converted
the brown bosom of the waste into one wide sea of crimson; the air is
charged with its honied odour. The dry, elastic turf glows, not only
with its flowers, but with those of the wild thyme, the clear blue
milkwort, the yellow asphodel, and that curious plant the _sundew_, with
its drops of inexhaustible liquor sparkling in the fiercest sun like
diamonds. There wave the cotton-rush, the tall fox-glove, and the taller
golden mullein. There creep the various species of heath-berries,
cranberries, bilberries, &c., furnishing the poor with a source of
profit, and the rich of luxury. What a pleasure it is to throw ourselves
down beneath the verdant screen of the beautiful fern, or the shade of a
venerable oak, in such a scene, and listen to the summer sounds of bees,
grasshoppers, and ten thousand other insects, mingled with the more
remote and solitary cries of the pewit and the curlew! Then, to think of
the coach-horse, urged on his sultry stage, or the plough-boy and his
teem, plunging in the depths of a burning fallow, or of our ancestors,
in times of national famine, plucking up the wild fern-roots for bread,
and what an enhancement of our own luxurious ease![3]

But woods, the depths of woods, are the most delicious retreats during
the fiery noons of July. The great azure campanulas, or Canterbury
bells, are there in bloom, and, in chalk or limestone districts, there
are also now to be found those curiosities, the _bee_ and _fly
orchises_. The soul of John Evelyn well might envy us a wood lounge at
this period.

_Time's Telescope._