278 VEGETATION OP SAND-DOWNS. 



Sand-downs, where the herbage is close and thick, 

 have often a very gay flora, composed of a great number 

 of plants. The surface is generally carpeted with white 

 clover, mixed with mosses, chiefly of the genus Tortida, 

 and small, fine-leaved grasses, especially Nardus stricta 

 and some of the more wiry leaved Festucce, with here 

 and there the characteristic Sand-reed. Such is the 

 composition of the greensward which forms the ground- 

 work of the piece. This is gaily ornamented with a pro- 

 fusion of the bright pink stars of Centaury (Urythrcea), 

 several kinds of which are distinguished. These are 

 diminutive Gentians, with all the bitterness of foliage 

 and brightness of flower peculiar to that family of plants. 

 Among them may sometimes be seen their more ambi- 

 tious brother the Chlora, with his golden eight-lobed 

 crown ; but this is rarely found except where there is 

 limestone or chalk in the soil. Next we are attracted 

 by different varieties of Wild Pansies ( Viola tricolor and 

 V. lutea), some of them blue, others yellow, and others 

 a mixture of these colours with creamy white. Then 

 Eye-bright, which, though diminutive, often indeed 

 dwindled down to a pair or two of leaves and a pair of 

 flowers, is still worthy both of its English name, and the 

 more sounding Greek Euphrasies,. Milkwort (Polyyala), 

 of three colours, white, blue, or red, abounds on such 

 ground ; as does also the singularly elegant Asperula 

 cynanchica, whose hair-like stems, with narrow leaves 

 in distant whorls, support a branching tuft of white or 

 pink tubular, four-cleft flowers. This graceful little 

 plant is of the same family as the Madder (Rubia), and 

 the Ladies' Bedstraw (Gralium), and is still more closely 



