314 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



is almost like an illusion. It has the pure, beautiful 

 yellow of the river camalote ; hi its size it is like 

 that flower ; it grows, too, in the same way, singly, 

 among rounded masses of leaves of the same lovely 

 rich green ; and the camalote, too, has for neigh- 

 bours the green blades of the sedges, and grey, graceful 

 reeds, and multitudinous bulrushes, their dark polished 

 stems tufted with brown. 



Looking at these masses of blossoming inimulus 

 at Ovington, I am instantly transported in thought to 

 some waterside thousands of miles away. The dank, 

 fresh smell is in my nostrils; I listen delightedly 

 to the low, silvery, water -like gurgling note of 

 the little kinglet in his brilliant feathers among the 

 rushes, and to the tremulous song of the green marsh 

 grasshoppers or leaf crickets ; and with a still greater 

 delight do I gaze at the lovely yellow flower, the un- 

 forgotten camalote, which is as much to me as the wee, 

 modest, crimson-tipped daisy was to Robert Burns or 

 to Chaucer; and as the primrose, the violet, the dog- 

 rose, the shining, yellow gorse, and the flower o' the 

 broom, and bramble, and hawthorn, and purple heather 

 are to so many inhabitants of these islands who were 

 born and bred amid rural scenes. 



On referring to the books for information as to 

 the history of the mimulus as a British wild flower, 

 I found that in some it was not mentioned, and in 

 others mentioned only to be dismissed with the re- 

 mark that it is an " introduced plant." But when was 



