208 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



the house, when opened, emits an odour of its dried 

 flowers. Here, too, are sweet marjoram, rosemary, 

 and rue ; so also bay and thyme, and some pot-herbs 

 whose use is forgotten, besides southernwood and 

 wormwood. They do not make medical potions at 

 home here now, but the lily leaves are used to allay 

 inflammation 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-brier, 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 greensward ; 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 

 honeydew. 



Just outside the rickyard, 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, 



