The Malvern range is a ridge running nearly north and south, with a series of smooth, steep summits, the breadth of the range being barely half a mile. Their slopes are of turf and furze, often as steep as the pitched roof of a house, with crags projecting here and there. The chief summits are the North Hill, rising eleven hundred and fifty-one feet above the Severn, the Worcestershire Beacon, fourteen hundred and forty-four feet, and the Herefordshire Beacon, thirteen hundred and seventy feet. Their highest parts are covered with verdure, and nearly seventeen hundred different varieties of plants have been found on the range. These hills stand as one of Nature's bulwarks, an outwork of the mountain-region of Wales, dividing an upland from a lowland district, each furnishing totally different characteristics. They were the boundary between the Romans and the Britons, and their summits present some remarkable remains of ancient fortifications. The Worcestershire Beacon rises directly above the town of Great Malvern, and south of it a fissure called the Wyche sinks down to about nine hundred feet elevation, enabling a road to be carried across the ridge. Some distance south of this there is an even lower depression, by which the high-road crosses from Worcester to Hereford. Then to the southward is the Herefordshire Beacon, and beyond it several lower summits. These two gaps or gateways in this natural wall of defence are both guarded by ancient camps of unusual strength and still in good preservation. One of these camps on the Herefordshire Beacon, with ditches, ramparts, and a keep, encloses forty-four acres. Also on top of the ridge are found traces of the ditch that was dug to mark the dividing-lines between the hunting-grounds of the bishops who ruled on either hand in Hereford and in Worcester. The bishops in the olden time appear to have been as keen sportsmen as the nobles.