196 FRESH FIELDS 



bushes and hedges like fruit. I heard a lady com- 

 plain that they got into the kitchen, crawling about 

 by night and hiding by day, and baffling her efforts 

 to rid herself of them. The thrushes eat them, 

 breaking their shells upon a stone. They are said 

 to be at times a serious pest in the garden, devour- 

 ing the young plants at night. When did the 

 American snail devour anything, except, perhaps, 

 now and then a strawberry ? The bird or other 

 creature that feeds on the large black snail of Brit- 

 ain, if such there be, need never go hungry, for I 

 saw these snails even on the tops of mountains. 



The same opulence of life that characterizes the 

 animal world in England characterizes the vegeta- 

 ble. I was especially struck, not so much with the 

 variety of wild flowers, as with their numbers and 

 wide distribution. The ox-eye daisy and the but- 

 tercup are good samples of the fecundity of most 

 European plants. The foxglove, the corn-poppy, 

 the speedwell, the wild hyacinth, the primrose, the 

 various vetches, and others grow in nearly the same 

 profusion. The forget-me-not is very common, and 

 the little daisy is nearly as universal as the grass. 

 Indeed, as I have already stated in another chapter, 

 nearly all the British wild flowers seemed to grow 

 in the open manner and in the same abundance as 

 our goldenrods and purple asters. They show no 

 shyness, no wildness. Nature is not stingy of 

 them, but fills her lap with each in its turn. Eare 

 and delicate plants, like our arbutus, certain of our 

 orchids and violets, that hide in the woods, and are 



