no SUMMER 



typical chalk group, has the shape of the little trees in 

 German boxes of toys, or their prototypes in Dutch and 

 Rhineland towns. It is the primmest of all the little plants 

 of the chalk. The head of purple blossom is conical rather 

 than pyramidal, but the name gives a good general idea of 

 its peculiar growth. This orchis is scentless, except for the 

 slight odour of greenish rankness which is common to most 

 lilylike plants when they lack any conspicuous smell. The 

 meadow or fragrant orchis, as its name betokens, is one of 

 the sweetest of the tribe ; and although it is of much the 

 same shade of purple as the pyramidal, and comes out 

 among the same downland grasses and at almost the same 

 time, it forms a contrast with it both by its fragrance and by 

 the long, lax growth of its blossom. The fragrant orchis is 

 in fact one of the lightest and most graceful of the whole 

 family of British orchids, which, like all their tribe, are 

 remarkable, on the whole, rather for curious interest than for 

 grace. 



The little burnt or dark-winged orchis, which is also found 

 sprinkled here and there at midsummer on the downs, is 

 certainly not a very graceful flower ; and yet there is the 

 usual fascination of the tribe in its blunt spike of blossoms so 

 deeply stained with dark crimson that it looks as if the 

 whole plant might have been seared in a grass-fire. The 

 larger dark-winged orchis is one of the rarer Kentish 

 species. The musk orchis, again, is almost an ugly little 

 plant, with its stumpy spike of rather sickly yellow-green 

 flowers ; and yet it too has its peculiar charm, in the rich 

 musky sweetness which the spike gives forth, especially in 

 hot sunshine. The bee orchis, on the other hand, is both a 

 curious and a beautiful plant. The allusive name of some of 

 the orchises for example, the butterfly is far-fetched, but 

 there is nothing fanciful in the name of the bee orchis. The 



