56 The Field Natur alls fs Quarterly Feb. 



spring-time — greener, indeed, for then they wear a pink flush 

 of cuckoo-flowers or are veiled by a golden haze of butter- 

 cups ; rush-marshes tawny as an autumn heathland ; swampy 

 marshes yellow with withered stalks and bleaching blades ; 

 and beyond them, like a field of ripe corn, was the glorious 

 amber of the river-side reeds. 



Over many of these marshes I had often rambled when 

 they were pink, purple, and golden with summer flowers ; 

 but seen when the sunlight broke upon them through the 

 driving clouds of a January day, they had all the hectic 

 beauty of the heathlands in autumn, as well as a glory all 

 their own. 



But a botanist is never content with revelling in the wealth 

 of colour which a landscape, taken as a whole, displays. So 

 it was not long before I found myself noting that, though 

 the sedge-blades were rusted and the stain of what Jefferies 

 calls " sun-wine " was gone out of the withered dock-leaves, 

 the leaves of the marsh bedstraws — we have both of them, 

 Galium palustre and G. uliginosnm, on our Norfolk marshes 

 — were still as green as in summer. So, too, were those of 

 the ground ivy on the "walls." But it was in the dykes 

 that the brightest green was to be seen, for there the water- 

 cress and the water-parsnep were showing new leaves ; and 

 those of the featherfoil or water- violet {Hottonia palustris), 

 that lovely aquatic flower of a genus containing only two 

 species, made matted masses of feathery foliage just below 

 the surface of the water. Presently I noticed that the bur- 

 docks, which by the country roadsides had lost their burrs 

 through being brushed against by foot-passengers and cattle, 

 had here kept them, and seemed likely to do so till summer 

 came again. By the dyke-sides and on the swampy marshes, 

 sapless stems, topped with large brown star-shaped umbels, 

 were the skeletons of last year's angelicas ; while smaller 

 stars were the involucres which once held the blue flowerets 

 of the devil's - bit {Scabiosa succisa), that late - blooming 

 scabious with a curious root, concerning which it was for- 

 merly believed that " the divell, for the envie that he beareth 

 to mankind, bit it off at the root, because it would else be 

 good for many uses." 



Bordering a spongy marsh, where in summer the sun- 



