MINIATURE FLOWER LIFE 



of autumn the downs by comparison look tame and 

 familiar, but in this mood, too, they are good. The 

 yield and the spring of elastic turf are never plea- 

 santer than in September, and here on the calmest 

 days days when in the valleys gossamer will hardly 

 float the air has its tonic. 



In some high-lying heaths and commons, all 

 the wild flower colour, save that of the deep violet 

 gentian, has gone by mid-September, but not so in 

 the great billowing chalk downs, where the only 

 shelter for flowers in cold, rough weather is here 

 and there a gaunt thorn bush with a few tufts of 

 rough, coarse grass about it. So that plants 

 mature very slowly here, and mill-mountain, eye- 

 bright, and common bird's-foot trefoil are still 

 blossoming. Curious how in these downs, which 

 convey such an idea of vast expanse and openness, 

 the typical flowers are cast on the smallest scale ! 

 It is all miniature vegetation. The flowers hardly 

 thrust up their heads above the short-cropped thy my 

 turf. Where thistles grow, they are disks lying flat 

 on the ground ; scabious here does without its stem. 



Most of the mill-mountain has blossomed, and 

 presents a tiny, dried-up, but perfect skeleton, for 

 no flower in England, after it has matured and shed 

 its seed, preserves for some time its complete form 

 more faithfully than this little fairy bell thing. 

 Mill-mountain is the most fragile-looking plant that 

 grows among those whose beauty can be admired 

 to the full without the aid of a microscope ; the very 

 hare-bell is almost bulky when set beside it, yet it 



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