fringes the bank at the foot of the wood for a long distance with its light feathery herbage and shining yellow flowers; the other grows under the trees, and among the brushwood, and in the part of the clough through which the path leading to Ringway from Castle Mill makes its way, thus being reachable without more trespass than of twenty forgiven yards. Few persons fond of cultivating plants in their parlours are unacquainted with that truly splendid flower, the African lily, or _Richardia Ethiopica_, which, opening a great white vase on the summit of its stem, resembles an alabaster lamp with a pillar of flame burning in the centre; the leaves lifted on long stalks, and shaped like the head of an arrow. Keeping the figure of this noble plant before the mind's eye, as the type for comparison, there is no difficulty in identifying the arum of Cotterill Wood. The latter is essentially the same in structure, but rises to the height of only some six or eight inches instead of thirty, with leaves proportionately smaller, and the flower, instead of white and vase-like, of a pale transparent green (though often mottled, like the leaves, with purple stains), and curving over the pillar in the centre like the cowl of a monk. The pillar is of a rich puce or claret colour, and occasionally of a delicate light amber. In the south of England, where the plant abounds, the dark ones are called "lords," and the amber-coloured, "ladies." Newbridge Hollow, the Ashley Woods, and several other places about Bowdon, share the possession of this remarkable plant, which is, without question, the most eccentrically formed of any that grow wild in the British Islands. It is found also near Pendlebury, at Barton, Reddish, and several other places, but very scantily, a circumstance worth notice, because illustrating so well what the learned call botanical topography. The floras of entire countries are often not more strongly marked by the presence or absence of certain species than the portions even of so limited an area as that of Manchester half-holiday excursions. Here, too, grows in profusion the sylvan forget-me-not, the flowers of an azure that seems sucked from heaven itself. People confound it sometimes with the germander-speedwell, another lovely flower of May and June. But the leaves of the speedwell are oval instead of long and narrow, like those of the forget-me-not; and the flowers are not only of quite a different shade of blue, but composed of four distinct pieces, the forget-me-not being five-lobed, and yellow in the centre. The consummate distinction of the forget-me-not is the mode in which the flowers expand, and which, along with its unique and celestial tint, is the true reason of its being used as the emblem of constancy. Possibly enough, the pathetic legend of the knight and the lady by the water-side may have had a fact for its basis, but the flower was representative of constancy long before the unlucky lover met his death.