52 IRature Studies in Berkshire. 



One always feels a certain diffidence in introducing 

 others to his favourite books, or scenes, or friends. 

 Taste is a most uncertain element of character, and 

 may not be too confidently counted on. I feel the 

 familiar misgivings as I find myself climbing the rails 

 and setting foot with strangers on the lovely hillside. 

 Perhaps others may not see it with my eyes, or feel 

 how subtle and delicate a charm it has. But if they 

 find it a tedious walk they can go back or go on 

 farther. The village is scarcely half a mile away ; 

 and over the ridge lie the mountains. 



But before one can enter the charming territory 

 he must pause at the moth-mullein whose silent 

 challenge to the eye halts one at the border of the 

 field. Just why this tall and soldierly weed has been 

 set to patrol this edge of the pasture, I am sure it 

 would be hard to tell. Only a small squad is on 

 duty, deployed along the depression near the fence. 

 But always I am arrested here as I was the first time 

 I ever crossed these boundaries. Moth-mullein is one 

 of nature's surprises. Like the harebell, balancing its 

 ethereal beauty on the edge of a bare cliff, or the 

 water-lily, extracting fragrance and purity from ooze 

 and slime, this dainty blossom wins its delicate colours 

 and exquisitely fragile texture from thin and unpromis- 

 ing soil, in this dry and exposed corner of the hillside. 

 Folded up in the bud it is always the same flat little 

 wad with hardly a suggestion of possibilities of grace 

 or delicate structure. And it is a witness to the 

 regularity and constancy of nature that in that folded 



