I have named but a few--those personally known to me--of the rarer or more characteristic shingle-flowers; and in so wide a field there is always the chance of new discoveries: hence the unfailing interest, to the botanist, of places which, apart from their flora, are likely to be shunned as wearisome. The shore itself is seldom without visitors; but the shingles that stretch back from the shore rarely attract the footsteps even of the hardiest walkers. It is only when there has been a murder in one of those solitary spots--or at least something that the newspapers can describe as "dramatic" or "sensational"--that the holiday-folk in the neighbouring towns forsake for a day or two the pleasures of pier or parade, and sally forth over the stony wildernesses in a search for "clues"; as when the "Crumbles," near Eastbourne, was the scene, two years ago, of a murder, and at a later date of a ghost. To discover the foot of some partially buried victim protruding from the pebbles--_that_ is deemed a sufficient object for a pilgrimage. The gold of the sea-poppy and the pink of the thrift are trifles that are passed unseen. III BY DITCH AND DIKE On either side Is level fen, a prospect wild and wide. CRABBE. "LEVELS," or "brooks," is the name commonly given in Sussex to a number of grassy tracts, often of wide extent, which, though still in a state of semi-wildness, have been so far reclaimed from primitive fens as to afford a rough pasturage for horses and herds of cattle, the ground being drained and intersected by dikes and sluggish streams. In these spacious and unfrequented flats wildfowl of various kinds are often to be seen; herons stand motionless by the pools, or flap slowly away if disturbed in their meditation; pewits wheel and cry overhead; and the redshank, most clamorous of birds during the nesting-season, makes such a din as almost to distract the attention of the intruding botanist. For it is the botanist who is specially drawn to these wild water-ways, where hours may be profitably spent in strolling beside the brooks, with the certainty of seeing many interesting plants and the chance of finding some unfamiliar ones; nor is there anything to mar his enjoyment, except the possible meeting with a bull on a wide arena from which there is no ready exit, save by jumping a muddy ditch or by crossing one of the narrow and precarious planks which do duty as footbridges.