stones, and in rocky places, far from any spring or apparent moisture; and yet, in those uncommonly dry summers of 1825 and 1826, it seemed to flourish with more than usual vigor throwing out its long tendrils, of a fine healthy green color, adorned with a profusion of blossoms, itself and the bramble being in some places the only thriving vegetation in a fence. It is marvellous how fibrous-rooted vegetables, the roots of which penetrate no depth into the soil, are enabled in some seasons to preserve any appearance of verdure, the earth they are fixed in seeming divested of all moisture by the power of the sun, and being heated like a sand-bath. The warmth of the earth in 1825 I omitted to record; but in the following year, which was more dry, and nearly as hot, the thermometer buried in the earth to the depth of three inches, in a flower border where many plants were growing in that sort of languid state which they present in such exhausting seasons, indicated the heat of 110°. Having said thus much of the clematis, the “withywind” of our peasantry, it must not be supposed that I advocate the advantages of this plant as a fence, but only tolerate it where we cannot induce much else to thrive, it making something of a boundary line; and perhaps that is all, for very frequently its numerous tendrils, and the downy clusters of its caudated seeds are so interwoven, that the snow accumulates upon the bush, and presses the whole to the earth, so that in the spring we commonly find a gap to be repaired where the clematis has thriven. About February, or towards the end of winter, this plant becomes stripped of its feathery seeds, which is accomplished by mice, I believe the harvest and the long-tailed one (mus sylvaticus) principally; with these they form nest-like beds in the upper and thickest part of the hedge, resorting to them in the day-time, where they enjoy in tolerable safety the air and warmth of the season, in preference to their cold and damp apartments in the earth, and I have occasionally disturbed them in their dormitories; but at this time it is not observed that the seeds are much fed upon by them, and probably are only collected as shelter in a temporary dwelling.