ON THE CHALK DOWNS 



107 



midsummer is embroidered with innumerable blossoms, as 

 finely as the pattern in a piece of tapestry. When we stoop 

 to examine them, we find that the multitude is composed of 

 only a few species, but that several of these species are 

 unusual. The least peculiar plant of the chalk sward is one 

 of the hawkweeds, which sprinkles the downs in June with 

 myriads of its small dandelion-like blossoms. All dandelions 

 can easily be undervalued ; there are no flowers more radiant 

 in every sense of the word ; 

 but they are too familiar to be 

 always impressive, and the 

 hawkweeds are not their most 

 striking type. Buttercups, 

 which blaze in most May and 

 midsummer pastures, are not 

 true flowers of the dry down ; 

 they are chiefly confined to the 

 damper bottoms, and bloom 

 among ranker and undownlike 

 grass. Their place as the 

 typical golden flowers of the 

 English landscape is taken by 

 the common bird's-foot tre- 

 foil, its relative the horse-shoe 

 vetch, and the paler ladies' fingers. Bird's-foot, or fingers- 

 and-thumbs as it is often called by country children, is a 

 common flower on turf in most places ; but it blooms with a 

 singular fury in the downs. Its fierce golden yellow kindles 

 more often to crimson, and its multitudes are innumerable. 

 Horse-shoe vetch may easily be mistaken for it at first sight ; 

 but its growth is larger and wirier, its leaves narrower, and 

 the yellow of its blossoms clearer and less ruddy. When 

 the seed-pods form the distinction is clear ; for the pods of 



BIRD'S-FOOT TREFOIL 



