The pleasantest time to visit this beautiful neighbourhood is the very end of July. The wild cherries are then ripe, and glisten like coral amid the green leaves; and in the water there is a rosy archipelago of persicaria blossom. Beyond the plantation, at the upper extremity, the surface is often so still and placid that every flower and leaf upon the banks finds its image beneath, the inverted foxgloves changing, as the calm gives way to ripples, into softly twining spirals of crimson light. When the shores are laid unusually bare through drought, they furnish abundance of the beautiful shells of the fresh-water mussel, _Anodonta cygnea_, often four inches in length, externally olive-green, and possessed inside of the pearly iridescence so much admired in sea-shells. Many, however, are broken, the swans being fond of the contents. To see the water to its full extent, visitors should continue along the hill-side, opposite the church, and as far as the grove of trees. With permission of the proprietor, it is a great gain, on arrival there, to cross by the rustic bridge, and, turning to the left, ascend the little valley called "Ridding's Brook." The botany of this part is truly rich,--in March the slopes are yellow with the wild daffodil, and in late summer the bank is gay with purple lythrum. The special interest of the valley lies, after all, in its curious dropping and petrifying spring. At the further extremity, upon the right, the steep clay bank, instead of receding, is hollowed underneath for the length of a hundred yards or so, the upper edge projecting to a considerable distance beyond the base, so as to overhang the stream, and form a sloping roof to it. The surface is completely covered with luxuriant moss, and from the land overhead comes an incessant filter of water, which at once nourishing the moss and entangled in it, causes it to hang down in long vegetable ringlets. At a distance they seem soft, but examination shows that every drop has brought along with it a particle of earth, which being deposited in the very substance of the moss, is gradually converting it into stone. Every cluster, externally so green and living, is in its heart a petrifaction.