To begin at the west, where the border is on Romsey, Michelmersh and Farley, the Romsey road, formerly the direct road from Winchester to Salisbury, running through it, beside Ampfield Church and village. This is high ground, and Ampfield Wood extends along it to the borders of Hursley Park. It is chiefly of oak, fir, and beech, and on the southern side are the fine arcades of beechwood that Mr. Keble used to call Hursley Cathedral. From one point in the wood long sight can distinguish a sort of needle which is the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. The wood is very old, probably primeval, as it is guarded in the oldest notices of the Manor of Merdon, and it contains a flora of its own, in which may be mentioned that rare and beautiful _Melittis Melissophyllum_, bastard balm, like a purple and white archangel. The bilberry is plentiful there and all along the beautiful park-like road to Romsey and Salisbury. The church, raised above the wayside fountain, and the churchyard full of very beautiful varieties of pine, still nestles into the wood, and there is a charming view over the open country towards the south. Farley Chamberlayne, which joins the wood on the other side, rising much higher, has a monument viewed from all the country round, erected by one of the St. John family to a horse which leapt down with him into a chalk-pit of considerable depth, and so alighted that neither horse nor man was hurt, and the horse won the cup at the races the year after, under the name of Beware Chalk-Pit. Parnholt wood, that clothes one side of the mount, is beloved by botanists for possessing tracts of lily of the valley, _Convallaria majalis_, and likewise _Paris quadrifolia_, a great rarity. The mount itself is bare chalk down, {154} but has a wonderful view over the whole undulating country—to the southward the beginning of forest land, and to the south-east, where the beechwoods of South Lynch begin to creep up the rapid slope of chalk, there is delightful hunting ground; for bee orchis (_Ophrys apifera_) swarm; careful search may discover the brown velvet blue-eyed fly, _Ophrys muscifera_, the quaint _man_ and _dwarf_ orchis can be found; butterfly or honey-suckle orchis, _Habenaria_, as we are constrained to term it, is frequent; and where the beech-trees begin there are those curious parasites which are the only plants they tolerate, the _Listera Nidus-avis_, birds’-nest orchis, the _Monotropa Hypopitys_, or yellow birds’-nest, the beautiful lily-like _Epipactis Grandiflora_; while helleborine and the curious and capricious tooth-wort, _Spiræa Filipendula_ or drop-wort, _Gentiana Amarella_, and other distinctive chalk-down plants are found.