I have memories of many a pious Sabbath spent in this enchanted realm, with the wind in the beeches for anthem, and for incense the scent of marjoram enriching the air. To one who knows these fragrant banks it seems strange that though the wild thyme has been so celebrated by poets and nature-writers, the marjoram, itself a glorified thyme, has by comparison gone unsung. We are told in the books that it is a potherb, an aromatic stimulant, even a remedy for toothache. It may be all that; but it is something much better, a thing of beauty which might cure the achings not of the tooth only, but of the heart. Its relatives the lavender and the rosemary have not more charm. It was the _amaracus_ of Virgil, the flower on whose sweetness the young Iulus rested, when he was spirited away by Venus to her secret abode: She o'er the prince entrancing slumber strows, And, fondling in her bosom, far away Bears him aloft to high Idalian bowers, Where banks of marjoram sweet, in soft repose, Enfold him, propped on beds of fragrant flowers.[10] [Footnote 10: _AEneid_, I. 691-4.] Who could wish for a diviner couch? Along this range of hills the chalk-pits, used or disused, are frequent at intervals, some of such size as to form landmarks visible at the distance of twenty or thirty miles. For a botanist, these amphitheatres, large or small, have always an attraction; for though they vary much in the quality of their flowers, and some have little to show beyond the commoner plants of a calcareous soil, there are a few which present a surprising array of the choicer kinds; and to light upon one of these treasure-troves is a joy indeed. I have in mind a large semicircular disused pit, lying high among the Downs, and bordered with abrupt grassy banks and coppices of beech, hazel, and fir, where during the past thirty years I have spent many long summer days, sometimes writing under the shade of the trees, at other times idling among the flowers, or watching the snakes that lie basking in the sun, or the kestrels that may often be seen hovering over the adjacent slopes. For all their unrivalled openness and sense of space, the Sussex Downs have no such "sun-trap" to show. One has heard of "the music of wild flowers."[11] I used to call the floor of this chalk-pit "the orchistra," so numerous are the orchids that adorn it. The spotted orchis, the fragrant orchis, the pyramidal orchis, the bee orchis, the butterfly orchis, and the twayblade--these six are stationed there within a small compass. The marsh orchis grows below; the fly orchis is in the neighbouring thickets; in the beech-woods are the bird's-nest orchis, the broad-leaved helleborine, with its rare purple variety (_epipactis purpurata_), and the large white helleborine or egg orchis. A dozen of the family within the circuit of a short walk! The man orchis seems to be absent, though it grows in some plenty in similar places on the same line of hills.