ACCORDING TO SEASON 



Yellow 

 violets 



Coltsfoot 



till the next morning if we hoped for any tea that 

 night. 



The next day dawned bright and clear. We 

 mounted our wheels, and made our destination 

 some woods of quite a different character from 

 those we had visited the day before. They were 

 low-lying and, in places, swampy. Before leav- 

 ing the open we visited the banks of a tiny 

 brook, whose green, inviting shores suggested 

 pleasant possibilities. Here we found our first 

 violets — little yellow ones, the so-called " downy " 

 species, growing in fresh clumps. Near by, on 

 erect, leafless stems, looking like a dandelion with 

 its heart plucked out, we discovered the coltsfoot, 

 otherwise the " coughwort," " clay-weed," " horse- 

 foot," and "hoofs." This being the first time I 

 had ever found this plant in flower, the occasion 

 was memorable. 



A wet, mossy rock looked as though it might 

 harbor any number of plant-waifs. Picking my 

 way along the slippery banks, I shouted with joy 

 A wet rock on seeing, lovely, fresh, and dainty, springing 

 airily from the flattened top, the first liverworts 

 we had found since leaving the train the previous 

 morning. In the chinks of this same rock were 

 soft young clusters of the fragile bladder-fern, still 

 immature, but exquisitely green and promising. 

 On the farther side of the rock grew that odd- 



50 



