COWSLIP 



tar lies open so that the flies and bees find it without 

 any especial directions. Although the anthers and 

 stigmas mature at the same time, the anthers open 

 outwardly and the outermost ones, farthest from the 

 stigmas, open first, so that the insects seeking nectar 

 scramble over the open ones and bear the pollen to 

 the waiting stigmas. 



T. W. Higginson writes in Outdoor Studies : ''One 

 afternoon last spring I had been walking through a 

 copse of young white birches— their leaves scarce yet ap- 

 parent — over a ground delicate with Wood-Anemones, 

 moist and mottled with Dog's-Tooth Violet leaves and 

 spangled with the clusters of Claytonia or Spring- 

 Beauty. All this was floored with last year's faded 

 foliage, giving a singular bareness and whiteness to 

 the foreground. Suddenly, as if entering a cavern, I 

 stepped through the edge of all this into a dark little 

 amphitheatre beneath a hemlock grove, where the 

 afternoon sunlight struck broadly through the trees 

 upon a tiny stream and a miniature swamp — this 

 last being intensely and luridly green, yet overlaid 

 with the pale gray of last year's weeds, and absolutely 

 flaming with the gayest yellow light from great clumps 

 of Cowslips. The illumination seemed perfectly weird 

 and dazzling; the spirit of the place appeared live, 

 mild, fantastic, almost human. Now open your 

 Tennyson and read: 'The wild Marsh-Marigold shines 

 Hke fire in swamps and hollows gray.' 



J )) 



63 



