8o THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



in many places the course of the railway. Poppies, 

 too, for some unknown reason, will occasionally appear 

 in strange and wonderful profusion. The striking in- 

 stance related by Lord Macaulay may be quoted by 

 way of illustration. After the battle of Landen the 

 ground, he tells us, " during many months was strewn 

 with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with 

 fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and holsters. 

 The next summer, the soil, fertilised by twenty 

 thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. 

 The traveller who, on the road from Saint Tron to 

 Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spread- 

 ing from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help 

 fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew 

 prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was 

 disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the slain." 

 In districts where the land is poor and badly cultivated 

 one not infrequently comes across fields almost wholly 

 occupied with weeds of cultivation, such as the corn 

 marigold, the purple corn-cockle, or the stinking 

 Mayweed. Sometimes a more uncommon species has 

 taken possession of the soil. In a chalky upland field 

 in the neighbourhood of Winchester the writer once 

 met with the field chick weed (Cerastium arvense, L.) 

 in extraordinary profusion, and it made a striking 

 appearance with its large white flowers. In the same 

 neighbourhood a grass-sown field that bordered the 

 high road near Bishop's Waltham was literally purple, 

 to the extent of several acres, with the flowers of the 

 early meadow orchis. Gerarde, the herbalist, who 

 made many botanical excursions about England in 

 the latter part of the sixteenth century, speaks of the 

 abundance of the yellow melilot in parts of Essex. 

 " About Clare and Heningham " (Castle Hedingham) 



