n8 



SUMMER 



verdure of such a spot is almost more beautiful than the 

 blaze of massed blossoms or the richness of their isolated 

 heads. Rich chalk turf is one of the most beautiful things 

 in the world, and the turf only supplies one element of green 

 in a wonderful variety of verdure. It comes midway in the 

 scale. Almost black are the yews of the down, and yet they 

 have latent greenness in every dark branch under the June 

 sun. The young shoots display it freely ; the old boughs 

 are reticent, but verdant at heart. The columnar junipers 

 they are our little northern cypresses are also black 



JUNIPERS 



within, but sparkle with frosted silver where the new shoots 

 shine. And yet both the black and the silver are phases of 

 green, and conform to the verdure of the landscape. Lush 

 elders hung with their cream-white moons are of a brighter 

 green, and so are the hawthorns, now past their flower-time, 

 and the vivid bushes of deadly nightshade. The white 

 bryony hangs in the elders, a little paler and cooler ; and 

 paler on the turf gleam the henbane and mullein plants, 

 where the bare chalk strikes whitest of all. When a breeze 

 ruffles the leaves of the thickets, they change into new 

 shades, more deeply contrasted. The whitebeam leaves 

 turn up their silver sides, and catch the eye like a chalk bluff; 

 then the breeze passes, and the landscape sinks together 



