NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON. 93 



with exceptional freedom. One bank, or waste spot, 

 that was observed was first of all perfectly purple 

 with ground ivy ; by degrees these flowers faded, and 

 the spot became a beautiful blue with veronica, or 

 bird's-eye; then, again, these disappeared, and up 

 came the larger daisies on stalks a foot high, whose 

 discs touched each other from end to end of the bank. 

 Here was a succession of flowers as if designed, one 

 taking the other's place. Meantime the trifolium 

 appeared like blood spilt among the grass. 



The thin, chalky soil of Sussex is singularly 

 favourable to poppies and charlock — the one scarlet, 

 the other a sharp yellow; they cover acres. Wild 

 pansies flowered on the hillside fallows, high up 

 among the wind, where the notes of the cuckoo came 

 faint from the wood in the Weald beneath. The wind 

 threw back the ringing notes, but every now and 

 then, as the breeze ebbed, they came, having travelled 

 a full mile against the current of air. There is no 

 bird with so powerful a voice as the cuckoo ; his cry 

 can be heard almost as far as a clarion. The wild 

 pansies were very thick — little yellow petals streaked 

 with black lines. In a western county the cottagers 

 call them " Loving Idols," which may perhaps be a 

 distortion of the name they bore in Shakespeare's 

 time — " Love in Idleness." It appears as if the rabbits 

 on the chalk are of a rather greyish hue, perceptibly 

 less sandy in colour than those living in meadows on 

 low ground. Though Brighton is bare of trees, there 

 is a large wood at a short distance. It is principally 

 of beech. In this particular wood there is a singular 

 absence of the jays which elsewhere make so much 



