AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



visited by one bee, with a hanging keel in sign that no 

 other bee need enter thus saving the bees' valuable 

 time, so that other blossoms benefit. This winter- 

 blooming of the " vuzz " is a token, as an old-time poet 

 sang, that " Beauty liveth still " the golden lining of 

 a drear January day. 



VERDANT tokens of Spring are to be found now in pro- 

 fusion on what seems the barrenest place, 

 The Old the mighty rocks of a stone hedge of a 

 Stone Devon lane. The effect of fresh greenery 



Hedge and pulsing life is largely due to the curious 

 leaves of pennywort, in all sizes from baby 

 round ones an eighth of an inch across to those 

 measured by full inches. They densely fringe the rocks 

 all round, like a living cement, jostling each other in 

 clustered hundreds. Luxuriant, indeed, is the new life 

 of these old stones, with their ferns, mosses, lichens, 

 minute cresses, and spreading foxglove leaves, while 

 here and there the great-hearted Ragged Robin is in 

 bloom. Devon has days in January which might have 

 been stolen from a genial March, and in the sheltered 

 lanes the bleakest day is redeemed by this living 

 garment of the rocks. 



ON Dartmoor, when sudden frost freezes the moorland 



mists and a film of ice covers every spray 



A Silver of heather and fern, the natives say: " The 



Frost ammil is on " a curious phrase for the 



winter phenomenon known to others as a 



" silver frost." The learned have traced " ammil " to 



enamel, pointing out that enamelling was an art much 



practised down to the sixteenth century. It is somewhat 



8 



