IN flHE MEADOWS. 77 



bulbous crowfoot has furrowed flower-stalks, and the 

 sepals are turned back, and it is the first to flower. 

 The creeping variety has runners like the strawberry 

 plant. The Summer Buttercup is Ranunculus acris, 

 and has round and smooth flower-stalks, and the sepals 

 spread outwards. Sometimes the Lesser Celandine 

 adds its golden charms to the meadow, though it prefers 

 the wayside bank, where we have placed it. 



Earlier even than the buttercups, we have what 

 Ebenezer Elliot terms the "sunflower of the spring," 

 the Yellow-rayed Dandelion (Taraxacum dens Iconis*), 

 which decks alike the meadows and the moors with 

 unpaled sunlight, gathering up honey for the early 

 bees, and furnishing pipes for childish fingers to make 

 neck-chains of. Its serrated leaves are searched for by 

 the French peasant to add to his salad, and when 

 blanched they are not to be despised. The English 

 villager, intent upon diet drinks, 'plucks up the root, 

 and, indeed, it forms a not-to-be-despised tonic. "When 

 dried and roasted the young roots are used as coffee. 

 Its downy balls of seeds are called clocks and blowballs 

 by the village children, who ask questions as to time 

 and weather of the ball, and then blow the seeds into 

 the air for an answer. This custom is at least as old as 



