182 Wild Flowers. 



tion of the skin. The house-leek had a reputation 

 with the cottage herbalists ; it is still talked of, but 

 I think very rarely used. 



Among the flowers here are beautiful dark-petalled 

 wallflowers, sweet-williams, sweet-briar, and pansies. 

 In spring the yellow crocus lifts its head from among 

 the grass of the green in front of the house (as the 

 snowdrops did also) , and here and there a daffodil. 

 These, I think, never look so lovely as when rising 

 from the green sward ; the daffodils grow, too, in the 

 orchard. Woodbine is everywhere climbing over 

 the garden seat under the sycamore tree, whose 

 leaves are spotted sometimes with tiny reddish dots, 

 the honey-dew. 



Just outside the rick-yard, where the grass of the 

 meadow has not been mown but fed by cattle, grow 

 the tall buttercups, rising to the knee. The children 

 use the long hollow stems as tubes wherewith to suck 

 up the warm new milk through its crown of thick 

 froth, from the oaken milking-pail. There is a fable 

 that the buttercups make the butter yellow when they 

 come but the cows never eat them, being so bitter ; 

 they eat all round close up to the very stems, but 

 leave them standing scrupulously. The children, 

 too, make similar pipes of straw to suck up the new 

 cider fresh from the cider-mill, as it stands in the 

 tubs directly after the grinding. Under the shady 

 trees of the orchard the hare's parsley flourishes, and 

 immediately without the orchard edge, on the ' shore ' 

 of the ditch, grow thick bunches of the beautiful blue 

 crane's-bill, or wild geranium, which ought to be a 

 garden flower and not left ty> the chance mercy of 

 the scythe. There, too, the herb Robert hides, and 



