NATURE IN ENGLAND 17 



tender and succulent, the streams full and roily. 

 Yarrow and cinquefoil also in the grass where I sit. 

 The plantain in bloom and fragrant. Along the 

 Avon, the meadow-sweet in full bloom, with a fine 

 cinnamon odor. A wild rose here and there in the 

 hedge-rows. The wild clematis nearly ready to 

 bloom, in appearance almost identical with our own. 

 The wheat and oats full-grown, but not yet turning. 

 The clouds soft and fleecy. Prunella dark purple. 

 A few paces farther on I enter a highway, one of 

 the broadest I have seen, the roadbed hard and 

 smooth as usual, about sixteen feet wide, with 

 grassy margins twelve feet wide, redolent with 

 white and red clover. A rich farming landscape 

 spreads around me, with blue hills in the far west. 

 Cool and fresh like June. Bumblebees here and 

 there, more hairy than at home. A plow in a field 

 by the roadside is so heavy I can barely move it, 

 — at least three times as heavy as an American 

 plow; beam very long, tails four inches square, the 

 mould-board a thick plank. The soil like putty; 

 where it dries, crumbling into small, hard lumps, 

 but sticky and tough when damp, — Shakespeare's 

 soil, the finest and most versatile wit of the world, 

 the product of a sticky, stubborn clay-bank. Here 

 is a field where every alternate swell is small. The 

 large swells heave up in a very molten-like way — 

 real turfy billows, crested with white clover-blos- 

 soms. " 



^^July 17. On the road to Warwick, two miles 

 from Stratford. Morning bright, with sky full of 



