“That remark has been made before,” said Mrs. Merton; “and yet they appear to me as little like thimbles as needles. The fact is, I think that they are more like mile-stones than anything belonging to the work-table; or, what bears a closer resemblance to them, they are like the awkward stone stiles I have seen, when I was a girl, in Gloucestershire.” They had now reached the point beyond which Mrs. Merton did not wish to go; and she sat down on the turf, while the guide helped Agnes sufficiently far down the cliffs to enable her to see the birds sitting on their ledges of rock, uttering strange sharp cries, and then chattering, as though they were talking to each other. There were Cormorants, and Gulls, and Puffins, and Guillemots, with several smaller kinds, each sitting on its separate rock, and alternately muttering and shouting, till Agnes’s head grew giddy, and she begged the man to take her back to her mamma. “Do not most of the birds generally leave you about this season?” said Mrs. Merton to the guide, when they returned. “They are later than usual this year, ma’am,” replied the man. “It was a late summer.” “I thought there had been five Needles, mamma,” said Agnes; “and I can see only three.” “There are five, miss,” said the man, “but you can very seldom see them all at once, unless you’r on the water.” “I wonder how these rocks ever came to be called the Needles?” observed Agnes,—“since they are not conical.” “There was one formerly,” replied the man “that was like a needle exactly. It was above one hundred feet high, and quite thin and pointed. It used to be called the pillar of Lot’s wife; but it fell down, and some of the cliffs have fallen down since then, and more will go soon I have no doubt of it. These cliffs are always a-falling, I think.” “I have heard,” said Mrs. Merton, “that the name of Needles is a corruption of two Saxon words signifying Undercliffe; and there appears little doubt that these rocks once formed part of the cliff, as you see they are dotted with rows of flints.” Agnes here stooped and gathered a flower from the down. It sprang from a little hollow place in the turf, and was thus sheltered from the cold by the higher part of the hollow. “Oh! do look mamma,” cried she, “I declare I thought there was a bee in the flower.” “It is the Bee Orchis,” said Mrs. Merton, “which is common on these chalky downs, though it is rarely found in flower later than July.” She then showed Agnes the curious construction of the flower, and told her that the pollen of the Orchis tribe, instead of being like fine dust, was in wax-like masses. “Here is another flower,” continued she, “which is of the same species, but something different, for nothing can equal the variety of nature.” [Illustration: _Fig. 13._ THE BEE ORCHIS (_Orchis apifera_). ] Agnes compared the two, and was astonished to find how different they were, though at first she had supposed them to be the same.