It is the real Itchen that is crossed at Highbridge. The canal goes through Allbrook, but both serve the purpose of irrigation, and a network of ditches crosses the meadows. Both river and canal, too, are excellent for fishermen, who in the season can find here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling in the clear stream, which now and then an otter inhabits, soon to serve as sport for his many enemies. Smooth and level, the river is still an unfailing source of enjoyment in the walks along the towing path, when moor-hens are swimming, and dipping on a glimpse of the spectator; when fish are rising, or sometimes taking a sudden “header” into the air and going down with a splash; when the water-vole rushes for his hole with head just above the water; when a blue flash of kingfisher darts by, and the deep blue or green dragon-flies sit on the sedges, or perhaps a tiny May-fly sits on a rail to shake off its last garment, and come forth a snow-white fairy thing with three long whisks at the tail. The _real_ Itchen is the boundary, and beyond lies Brambridge. But on coming to the bridge over the canal, the road leads westward, towards Otterbourne Hill. First it skirts a stream, a tributary to the Itchen, and goes between meadows till the old church is reached, now only a chancel in the midst of old headstones, and still bordered with trees on the bank between it and the stream. There are square brick monuments covered with stone slabs. In the interstices there used to be a great deal of _Adiantum nigrum_—black maidenhair, but it has disappeared. The flowers are quite different from those of the peaty marshes on the opposite side of the district, belonging to an alluvial soil, washed down from the chalk hills. The great reed-mace adorns the Itchen, and going along the disused towing path of the canal there is to be found abundance of the black and golden spikes of the sedge, and the curious balls of the bur-reed, very like the horrid German weapon called a morning star. Also meadow-sweet, meadow-rue, and comfrey of every shade of purple, the water avens and forget-me-not, also that loveliest plant the bog-bean, with trefoil leaves and feathery blossoms. _Orchis latifolia_ is in plenty, and also _Orchis incarnata_, sometimes called the Romsey orchis. Of late years the _mimulus_ has gilded the bank of one of the ditches. Is it compensation for the _Pinguicula vulgaris_, which has been drained away, or the mountain pink at Highbridge, which I suspect some gardener of appropriating? Higher up the course of the river, _Orchis conopsea_, long-spurred and very sweet, the compact _Orchis pyramidalis_, and the rare _Epipactis palustris_ are to be found, as well as _Campanula Glomerata_, and crow garlic, in an old chalk-pit nearly destroyed by the railway and the water works.