THE LIVING GARMENT 49 



with green and scarlet berries. Among the bushes on 

 the lower slopes one stumbles on places of extraordi- 

 nary fertility, where the thistle, foxglove, ragwort, 

 viper's bugloss, agrimony, and wild mignonette grow 

 to a man's breast ; while over them all the mullein 

 lifts its great flowery rod to a height of six to nine 

 feet. From these luxuriant patches you pass to more 

 open ground covered with golden seeding grasses, and 

 heather, fiery purple-red, and emerald-green spots 

 powdered white with woodruff, and patches of purple 

 thyme. One afternoon, tired with a long day's ramble 

 in the burning sun, I cast myself down on one of these 

 fragrant beds and fell into a doze. That night when 

 I threw off my clothes I noticed that the fragrance 

 still clung to them, and when I woke next morning 

 the air of the room was so charged with it that for a 

 moment I fancied myself still out of doors, where I 

 had fallen asleep on that purple flowery bed. 



The heather on the downs is of two species — the 

 pale purple ling, or dwarf heath, and the fiery purple- 

 red small-leafed heath. I decline to call it by its 

 common but absurd name — absurd, I mean, when 

 speaking of it as a common plant of the Sussex 

 Downs. From July to September is the blossoming 

 time of the heath, but at one favoured spot I have 

 found the small-leafed species in fullest bloom in 

 June ; and as in this instance heather and June- 

 flowering dropwort were blossoming together, where 

 there was no other plant to spoil the harmony, a 



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