172 FRESH FIELDS 



the drilled grain and pull the mustard out, and 

 carry it away, leaving not one blossom visible. 



On the whole, I should say that the British wild 

 flowers were less beautiful than our own, but more 

 abundant and noticeable, and more closely associated 

 with the country life of the people; just as their 

 birds are more familiar, abundant, and vociferous 

 than our songsters, but not so sweet-voiced and 

 plaintively melodious. An agreeable coarseness and 

 robustness characterize most of their flowers, and 

 they more than make up in abundance where they 

 lack in grace. 



The surprising delicacy of our first spring flow- 

 ers, of the hepatica, the spring beauty, the arbutus, 

 the bloodroot, the rue-anemone, the dicentra, a 

 beauty and delicacy that pertains to exclusive wood 

 forms, contrasts with the more hardy, hairy, hedge- 

 row look of their firstlings of the spring, like the 

 primrose, the hyacinth, the wood spurge, the green 

 hellebore, the hedge garlic, the moschatel, the 

 daffodil, the celandine, and others. Most of these 

 flowers take one by their multitude; the primrose 

 covers broad hedge banks for miles as with a car- 

 pet of bloom. In my excursions into field and 

 forest I saw nothing of the intense brilliancy of our 

 cardinal flower, which almost baffles the eye; no- 

 thing with the wild grace of our meadow or moun- 

 tain lilies; no wood flower so taking to the eye as 

 our painted trillium and lady's-slipper; no bog 

 flower that compares with our calopogon and are- 

 thusa, so common in southeastern New England; 



