WILD GREENHOUSES 19 



is on the tops that we find our only blossoms of 

 veronica and pimpernel. The tops in the meadow will 

 be yellow with cowslips before the furrows are yellow 

 with buttercups, and when the purple orchis has faded 

 from the ridge, then we can find the late stragglers in 

 the trough. The little mounds on the common that 

 were put there by last year's moles or last summer's 

 ants are specially covered with evergreen cistus or 

 the tiny promise of thyme and marjoram. Bosses of 

 the same will greet our footsteps on the flat when 

 summer really comes, but we can find little traces of 

 them now. According to some, the ant-hill ought 

 to be more forward than the mole-hills because for- 

 mic acid is a great accelerator of growth. It is said 

 to enter into the formula, by means of which Indian 

 jugglers produce a bush in a few minutes from seed. 

 That is fanciful, but we intend some day to put for- 

 mic acid to a careful test as a quickener of growth. 

 Certainly the ant-hills become quickly covered with 

 vegetation, the grass blades keeping pace with the 

 labours of the ants to cover them, and new things 

 rooting and growing there amain. It would not be 

 probable that the principle would retain its properties 

 through the winter, and the ant-hills are only early 

 by virtue of their elevation and perhaps of their 

 hollowness. 



Oddly enough, some of Nature's best greenhouses 

 are under water. The hornwort, water-buttercup, and 

 other pond weeds are green and pushing long before 

 the clover has sprouted. Perhaps the water forms a 

 lens for the concentration of the sun's best rays just 

 as the glass of the greenhouse does. It may be 

 difficult to think of water-weeds as feeling warm and 



