Identifier: flowerstheirpedi00alleuoft Title: Flowers and their pedigrees Year: 1884 (1880s) Authors: Allen, Grant, 1848-1899 Subjects: Flowers -- Anatomy Flowers -- Great Britain Plants -- Evolution Publisher: New York : D. Appleton Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image: e ofthe Atlantic and the Gulf Stream ; the clear wind isblowing straight from seaward, not keen and dry fromthe Eastern plains, but soft and pure from a thousandleagues of uninterrupted ocean ; and the view overthe broken dale of Avon, where it cuts its way in averitable gorge through the high barrier of the Bathoolite, stretches for miles over one of the loveliest andgreenest valleys in all our lovely green England.More than that—the whole history of Britain is visiblyunfolded before my very eyes. That bald roundishhill to the right, with its smooth summit artificiallylevelled, and its sides planed down into a long glacis,is Little Solisbury ; and Little Solisbury, as its nameclearly shows, is the very oldest Bath of all. For it is The Romance of a Wayside J! ccrf. 45 the bury or hill-fort of Solis, the ancient fortified townof the Keltic and Euskarian natives ; and when, longages afterwards, the Romans planted their station inthe valley below, they naturally called the hot springs

Text Appearing After Image: Fig. 13.—Hairy Wood-spurge (Euphorbia pilosa). which they found there by the name of Aqua; Solis ;and equally naturally misinterpreted the second word(really a native term, Sulis) as the genitive of Sol, andaccordingly dedicated their great temple on the spot 46 Flowers and their Pedigrees. to Apollo. Those straight white lines and green-grown ridges on the flanks of Banagh Down and theeastern heights are the vestiges of the old Romancauseways—the Fosse and its branches—now totallydisused or else degraded into modern cait-roads ; andthe Institution Buildings in the valley below cover orcontain all the remaining memorials of the statelyRoman town. Back of me again, on Hampton Down,stand the earthworks of Caer Badon, the later Britishvillage, planted there when fear of the heathen WestSaxon invaders had driven back the Christian Welsh-man to the hills which he had deserted for the fruitfulvalley during the security of the Pax Romana ; andthis long mound, on whose summit I am stand

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