78 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



CLEMATIS LANE. 



Wild clematis grew so thickly on one side of the 

 narrow lane that the hedge seemed made of it. Trail- 

 ing over the low bushes, the leaves hid the hawthorn 

 and bramble, so that the hedge was covered with 

 clematis leaf and flower. The innumerable pale flowers 

 gave out a faint odour, and coloured the sides of the 

 highway. Rising up the hazel rods and taller haw- 

 thorn, the tendrils hung downwards and suspended 

 the flowers overhead. Across the field, where a hill 

 rose and was dotted with bushes— these bushes, too, 

 were concealed by clematis, and though the flowers 

 were so pale their numbers tinted the slope. A cropped 

 nut-tree hedge, again, low, but five or six yards thick, 

 was bound together by the bines of the same creeping 

 plant, twisting in and out, and holding it together. 

 No care or art could have led it over the branches in 

 so graceful a manner ; the lane was festooned for the 

 triumphal progress of the waggons laden with corn. 

 Here and there, on the dry bank over which the 

 clematis projected like an eave, there stood tall cam- 

 panulas, their blue bells as large as the fingerstall of a 

 foxglove. The slender purple spires of the climbing 

 vetch were lifted above the low bushes to which it 



