Artizan Naturalists.— The following extracts ave taken from a letter written by a Leicester stocking-maker, George Robson, who has found means for self-cultivation while I bringing up a large family on the earnings of his frame. There are probably not a dozen men in Leicester of all classes who know as much about the Natural History of the district as be does, and none who love Nature more truly and reverently.—F. T. Mott.
"I have at last managed to pay, once more, a visit to the home of Oreopteris, and you will be pleased to hear that it is not extinct in our forest yet, but even flourishes more plentifully than before. It is very pleasing to know that I did not aid in obliterating one species of our native flora from our much-loved Charnwood. I would be a sower of grass, not a mower; a builder up, not like a dark iconoclast, a breaker of God's own artwork. Last year there seemed to he but little of the fern Oreopteris growing near the wood, and, as you thought, it seemed to be dwindling out; but on reaching the lane last Sunday I was very much surprised to find so many plants scattered along the wall that forms the boundary of the wood. Indeed, I was much in doubt at first whether they were not seedlings of N. Filis-mas. There were at least twenty roots of it in the ditch, of which I brought about a dozen fronds. Enclosed are specimens, so that you may verily it yourself. Scutellaria minor was also very plentiful at the foot of Old John Hill, and what was more surprising was to find Hydrocotyle vulgaris growing wonderfully fine in the lane, near the Oreopteris, even finer than at Groby Pool. Enclosed, too, is specimen of Polypodium calcareum, from Miller's Dale, Derbyshire, which may interest you. I have paid two visits to this district this year. The hills and vales are magnificently grand, both in shine and storm, for I have seen them in both, and shall never forget the awful beauty of a thunderstorm witnessed from the Heights of Abraham. The storm-clouds came up the vale like night advancing in column. They seemed to reach from earth to sky, first grasping the hills, then enwrapping all in Cimmerian darkness. As it approached, the great raindrops fell heavy and fast, It was like a mighty and evil spirit ushered in by furies. The jagged lightning ran up the dark as though a band of elastic fire had been stretched from heaven to earth, and suddenly let go, the whole stroke being in view. The storm moved past, and then came another sight I had never before beheld. The sun gleamed forth, and there, right below, was a beautiful rainbow stretching the whole length of the Dale, and parallel with the river. It really seemed like being in another sphere to have a rainbow at our feet. What a rush of feeling takes possession of one mid such scenes as these, where we are shown new wonders, new beauties, and grandeur on every hand. We both take a new flight of thought and feeling ourselves and are enabled to better appreciate the deepened thought of others. One could scarcely witness such scenes as these without thinking of Byron, who courted nature in her anger, and who has, perhaps. given us the best description of a thunderstorm. Then the sunshine, and the rainbow! One, who had read it, would almost be sure to think, on witnessing such a scene, of that beautiful simile in Eliza Cook's poem—
I'd climb on any rainbow bridge,
To let my heart look farther out.
And truly the soul does seem to look further out, to be with nature in all her wildness, and to be, as it were, nearer to God. The botany of Matlock Bath is very rich and rare. Geum rivale grows in the street; Cardamine impatiens along the Derwent, on the Lover's Walk, with many others; and on the hills any amount of Thlaspi alpestre, var. rivens. can be got. The history of Millers Dale was rather disappointing, but the geology is grand. There was plenty of such fens as Cystopteris fragilis
