ON SUSSEX SHINGLES

Salt and splendid from the circling brine.
Swinburne.

Where should a flower-lover begin his story if not from the sea shore? Earth has been poetically described as "daughter of ocean"; and the proximity of the sea has a most genial and stimulating effect upon its grandchildren the flowers, not those only that are peculiar to the beach, but also the inland kinds. There is no "dead sea" lack of vegetation on our coasts, but a marked increase both in the luxuriance of plants and in their beauty.

Sussex is rich in "shingles"—flat expanses of loose pebbles formerly thrown up by the waves, and now lying well above high-water mark, or even stretching landward for some distance. One might have expected these stony tracts to be barren in the extreme; in fact they are the nursery-ground of a number of interesting flowers, including some very rare ones; and in certain places, where the stones are intersected by banks of turf, the eye is surprised by a veritable garden in the wilderness. Let us imagine ourselves on one of these shingle-beds in the early summer, when the show of flowers is at its brightest: and first at Shoreham—"Shoreham, crowned with the grace of years," as Swinburne described it.

Alas! the Shoreham beach, which until less than twenty years ago was in a natural state, has been so overbuilt with ship-works and bungalows that it has become little else than a suburb of Brighton; yet even now the remaining strip of shingle, stretching for half a mile between sea and harbour, is the home of some delightful plants. In the more favoured spots the gay mantle thrown over the stony strand is visible at the first glance in a wonderful blending of colours—the gold of horned poppy, stonecrop, melilot, and kidney vetch; the white of sea-campion; the delicate pink of thrift; and the fiery reds and blues of the gorgeous viper's bugloss—and when a nearer scrutiny is made, a number of minute plants will be found growing in close company along the grassy ridges. The most attractive of these are the graceful little spring vetch (vicia lathyroides), the rue-leaved saxifrage, and that tiny turquoise gem which is apt to escape notice, the dwarf forget-me-not—a trio of the daintiest blossoms, red, white, and blue, that eyes could desire to behold.

Shoreham has long been famous for its clovers; and some are still in great force there, especially the rigid trefoil (trifolium scabrum), and its congener, trifolium striatum, with which it is often confused, while the better-known hare's-foot also covers a good deal of the ground. But there is a sad tale to tell of the plant which once the chief pride of these shingles, the starry-headed trefoil, a very lovely pink flower fringed with silky hairs, which, though not a native, has been naturalized near the bank of the harbour since 1804, but now, owing to the enclosures made for ship-building works, has been all but exterminated. "This," wrote the author of the Flora of Sussex (1907) "is one of the most beautiful of our wildflowers, and is found in Britain at Shoreham only. Fortunately it is very difficult to extirpate any of the leguminosæ, and it may therefore be hoped that it may long continue to adorn the beach at Shoreham." The hope seems likely to be frustrated. Among the rubble of concrete slabs, and piles of timber, only three or four tufts of the trefoil were surviving last year, with every likelihood of these also disappearing as the place is further "developed." The second of the Shoreham rarities, the pale yellow vetch (vicia lutea) has fared better, owing to its wider range, and is still scattered freely over the yet unenclosed shingles. It is a charming flower; but its doom in Sussex seems to be inevitable, for the bungalows, with their back-yards, tennis-courts, "tradesmen's entrances," and other amenities of villadom, will doubtless continue to encroach upon what was once a wild and unsullied tract.

Still sadder is the fate of the devastated coast on the Brighton side of the harbour-mouth, where the low cliffs that overlook the lagoon from Southwick to Fisher's-gate have long been known to botanists as worthy of some attention. Here, on the grassy escarpment, the rare Bithynian vetch used once to grow, as we learn from Mrs. Merrifield's interesting Sketch of the Natural History of Brighton (1860); and here we may still find such plants as the sea-radish, a large coarse crucifer with yellow flowers and queer knotted seed-pods; the blue clary, or wild-sage, running riot in great profusion; the fragrant soft-leaved fennel; the strange star-thistle (calcitrapa), so-called from its fancied resemblance to an ancient and diabolical military instrument, the caltrop, an iron ball armed with sharp points, which was thrown on the ground to maim the horses in a cavalry charge; the pale-flowered narrow-leaved flax; and lastly, that rather uncanny shrub of the poisonous nightshade order, with small purple flowers and scarlet berries, which is called the "tea-tree," though the tea which its leaves might furnish would hardly make a palatable brew.

Below these cliffs, on an embankment that divides the waters of the lagoon from the seashore, there still flourishes in plenty the fleshy leaved samphire, once sought after for a pickle, and ever famous through the reference in King Lear to "one who gathers samphire, dreadful trade." In this locality there is no dreadful trade, except that of reducing a once pleasant shore to an unsightly slag-heap.

Let me now turn from this melancholy spectacle to those Sussex shingles on which the Admiralty and the contractor have not as yet laid a heavy and ruinous hand. On some of the more spacious of these pebbly beaches, as on that which lies between Eastbourne and Pevensey, the traveller may still experience the feeling expressed by Shelley:

I love all waste
And solitary places, where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.