Yesterday afternoon, having an hour or so to spare at Minster, I
examined slightly several of these streams and their banks. The contrast
between them and the corresponding brooklets of Oxford, also a low-lying
district, was very strongly marked.
In the first place, the willow, which forms so characteristic an
ornament of the brooks and rivers of Oxford, is wholly absent. Most of
the streamlets are entirely destitute of even a bush by which their
course can be marked; so that when, as is often the case, a heavy white
fog overhangs the entire district, looking from a distance as if the
land had been sunk in an ocean of milk, no one who is not familiarly
acquainted with every yard of ground could make his way over the fields
without falling into the watery boundaries which surround them.
Some of them, however, are distinguished by hawthorns, which take the
place of the willows, and thrive so luxuriantly that they may lay claim
to the title of forest trees. Blackberries, too, are exuberant in their
growth, and in many spots the hawthorn and blackberry on opposite sides
of the brook have intertwined their branches across it and have
completely hidden the water from sight.
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