WILD HYACINTHS. 25 



all the lower part of the wood along the banks of Yen- 

 lake is a deep morass of spongy bog, thickly and treach- 

 erously carpeted now in spring with an exquisite green 

 pile of glossy liverworts, pond weed, and brooklime. 

 But in the upper part, on the slope close by, great masses 

 of wild hyacinths are out in blossom, dyeing the whole 

 side of the copse a brilliant blue with their dainty droop- 

 ing heads of clustered flowers. Blue-bells we call them 

 here in the south ; but in the north that pretty name be- 

 longs rather to the hare-bell or heather- bell, which is the 

 true blue-bell of Scotland and of northern poets, growing 

 abundantly on all the bleak heather-clad hillsides of the 

 Highlands. Few flowers more distinctly mark an epoch 

 in the country calendar than these same tall and nodding 

 English wild hyacinths. 



They blossom early, do the hyacinths, because they 

 have got a good stock of material in their bulb to go on 

 upon. Grub one up with your stick from the soft black 

 mould of the copse they are not deeply buried, while 

 the mould is anything but stiff and you will see that the 

 white bulb is large and well filled, especially in the 

 younger budding specimens. Cut it in two with a jack- 

 knife, and a clammy white juice exudes from its concen- 

 tric layers, rich in starches and gums for the supply of 

 the large thick-petalled flowers. These first spring blos- 

 soms are almost all bulbous ; otherwise they would not 

 be able to bloom so early in the year. Black Dog Mead 

 is now all full of buttercups which a townsman would 

 never know from the summer kind ; for the flowers are 

 just the same> and townsmen seldom trouble their heads 

 about stems, or roots, or foliage. But the countryman 

 knows the two weeds apart right well, for one is a much 

 more troublesome intruder in a meadow than the other. 

 This early form is the bulbous buttercup, and it flowers 



