126 WILD TLOWEBS OF 



dark clusters on its branches, which are the naked 

 organs of its fructification. The wild woodbine has 

 now fully expanded its leaves, and festoons many a 

 hazel with a rich verdant wreath, or dangles from 

 the spreading head of some old pollard willow. 



By the close of the month, on the average of years, 

 the Pear-trees in the orchards of Herefordshire, Wor- 

 cestershire, and Gloucestershire, present a most 

 beautiful spectacle ; and after a light shower, as the 

 sun again breaks through the parting clouds, and 

 picturesque white cumuli appear dotting the blue 

 heavens, scarcely any thing can be more exciting than 

 to ramble through a series of pear orchards, where 

 the landscape is backed by the mural Malvern hills, 

 stretched in long dark boldly-swelling steeps, the 

 trees white with a profusion of bloom, while the 

 humble-bee booms through the air, the Blackcap 

 warbles amidst the branches, the Nightingale chirrups 

 among the pollard oaks of the coppice, and the 

 "wandering voice" of the Cuckoo ', comes floating at 

 intervals up the vale now redolent of fragrance. A 

 pear-orchard in exuberant flower is a vegetable spec- 

 tacle not easily matched, for the bending branches of 

 the Pear-tree give a gracefulness to its outline far 

 exceeding the stiff formality of the Apple-tree, and 

 oppressed with a multitudinous crowd of blossoms its 

 branches almost trail the ground, a bending load of 

 beauty that seems by moonlight a mass of silvery 

 ingots. The "Barland Orchard," between "Worcester 

 and Malvern, containing more than seventy trees 

 lofty as oaks, cannot be seen by the traveller without 

 admiration, and is the finest in the kingdom, though 

 the trees are now getting old. 



