The watering-places themselves are healthful, well-conducted, and ambitious. None of them had substantial existence seventy or eighty years ago. Southport, the most important and the most advanced in all that is honourable, is a daughter of the primitive neighbouring village of Churchtown,--_filia pulchrior_ very emphatically. Blackpool, in 1817, was only a rabbit-warren, the sunward slopes, like those of original Birkdale and Churchtown, a playground for quick-eyed lizards, their descendants, both gray and green, not yet extinct. Fleetwood has grown up within easy recollection; Morecambe is a creation almost of yesterday. Unexcelled, in summer, for the visitor in search of health, in its cool, firm, ample sands, Fleetwood aspires to become important also commercially. Morecambe, though destitute of a deep channel, and unable to offer the security of a natural harbour, is making vigorous efforts in the same direction. Sir J. E. Smith, in his account of the evening-primrose in _English Botany_, A.D. 1805, described the Lancashire coast as a sort of _ultima Thule_:--to-day, at Southport, there is the finest Winter Garden out of London; and at a couple of miles distance, reached by tram-car, a Botanical Garden, including fernery and conservatories, that puts to shame many an ancient and wealthy city. A drawback to these South Lancashire watering-places, as mentioned before, is that the water, at low tide, recedes so far, and ordinarily is so reluctant to return. But is the tide everything? When out, there is the serene pleasure of silent stroll upon the vast expanse, the inspiring solitude beyond which there is only Sea. On these smooth and limitless sands there is plenty alike for repair of body, the imagination, and the solace of the naturalist. Shells may be gathered in plenty, and in different parts, of very various kinds: solens, long and straight; mactras, dentalias, that resemble miniature elephant's tusks; the fragile pholas; tellinas, that seem scattered rose-petals; and towards Fleetwood pearly trochuses, dappled with lilac. A more delicious seaside walk for those who love the sound of the rolling surge, the sense of infinite tranquillity, total seclusion from every circumstance of town and city life, and the sight of old ocean's playthings, may be sought the world over, and not found more readily than by pursuing the five or six miles between Fleetwood and Blackpool, one's face turned all the while to the poetic west. Wanting rocks, upon these quiet sands there are no native seaweeds, though fragments lie about, torn from beaches far away, and stranded.