A GLANCE AT BRITISH WILD FLOWERS 165 



contrast in her works, and less capriciousness and 

 reservation also. She is chary of new species, but 

 multiplies the old ones endlessly. I did not ob- 

 serve so many varieties of wild flowers as at home, 

 but a great profusion of specimens ; her lap is fuller, 

 but the kinds are fewer. Where you find one of 

 a kind, you will find ten thousand. Wordsworth 

 saw "golden daffodils," 



" Continuous as the stars that shine 

 And twinkle on the milky way," 



and one sees nearly all the common wild flowers in 

 the same profusion. The buttercup, the dandelion, 

 the ox-eye daisy, and other field flowers that have 

 come to us from Europe, are samples of how lav- 

 ishly Nature bestows her floral gifts 'upon the Old 

 World. In July the scarlet poppies are thickly 

 sprinkled over nearly every wheat and oat field in 

 the kingdom. The green waving grain seems to 

 have been spattered with blood. Other flowers 

 were alike universal. Not a plant but seems to 

 have sown itself from one end of the island to the 

 other. Never before did I see so much white 

 clover. From the first to the last of July, the 

 fields in Scotland and England were white with it. 

 Every square inch of ground had its clover blossom. 

 Such a harvest as there was for the honey-bee, un- 

 less the nectar was too much diluted with water in 

 this rainy climate, which was probably the case. 

 In traveling south from Scotland, the foxglove 

 traveled as fast as I did, and I found it just as 

 abundant in the southern counties as in the north- 



