AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



IT is pleasant to know of badgers in a countryside, 

 though they are rarely seen. They have 

 Badgers' fastnesses from which it seems they will 

 Ancestral never be driven. If forced from less im- 

 Memory pregnable strongholds, they have a way of 

 reappearing after many years, as if by 

 virtue of ancestral memory. Gamekeepers note the same 

 point about woodcock they vanish, but return after 

 years to one spot, perhaps not a feeding-ground, un- 

 distinguished from others over leagues of land. A 

 generation ago, on the Sussex downs, in the days of 

 one remembered as " The old Squire," a famous 

 badger and fox stronghold was utterly effaced by 

 blasting. Badgers are there to-day, and with families. 



A FLOWER of to-day is the Pasque-flower, almost first 

 in beauty among our wild flowers, queen 

 The of our anemones ; a rarity of the short down 



Pasque- grass of the Chilterns, or other downs and 

 flower limestone pastures. It blooms later than its 



lowly sister, the wood anemone, and its 

 leaves, and the chalice of imperial hue, are remarkable 

 for their silkiness. Two other rare sisters are found in 

 the wilds, the yellow and the blue mountain anemones: 

 these are aliens. The Pasque-flower is a native, and a 

 wilding, though it looks as if it had wandered from a 

 lordly garden-bed, to blush unseen in some wild and 

 secret place. 



ARMIES of daisies that invade golf-courses arouse deadly 



anathemas ; but deserve a word of admira- 



Warrior tion for their easy victory over the grasses. 



Daisies Their leaf-rosettes take firm possession of 



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