UP THE GLEN 151 



It is the white garment or tippet the earth puts 

 on to show that spring has come. No meadow or 

 pasture or green roadside, if the grass grow not 

 too rank, is without it except it may be some 

 seaside moor it loves not wild places. Nor can it 

 be said to care for shadow. It haunts the margins, 

 but barely enters the woods. And the daisy is one 

 of the missing flowers. 



Yet one scarcely misses it. There is the same 

 sheen ahead ; and, as all is rude grassland together 

 here, the effect is so much the more widely spread. 

 The unobservant are not even aware that another 

 agent is at work ; but so it is. 



That other is the eyebright, not altogether pure, 

 touched with purple. But is not the daisy also 

 " the wee, modest, crimson - tipped flower " ? At 

 a distance both seem white. 



The names of the two (that do the same office in 

 different scenes reigning, the one over Highland, 

 the other over Lowland turf) are strangely alike 

 days-eye and eyebright. One lifts the crimson 

 lids, which have been dropped during the dark, to 

 greet the morning, and exposes the golden ball 

 without blinking throughout the hot and bright 

 hours ; the other, from its specific name, officinalis, 

 seems to have been credited with some medicinal 



