50 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



" Daisies pied, and violets blue, in Essex a parish, it may be noted, 

 And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, 



And lady-smocks all silver white, m whlch the Pnrose does not occur. 



Do paint the meadows with delight." " These oxlips," wrote the finder, 



Now, in the glowing language of Tenny- "grow by thousands in the meadows, 

 son, the golden kingcups shine " like and in moist woody places adjoining : 

 fire, In swamps and hollows gray " ; in one instance a meadow of about 

 now " the little speedwell's darling two acres is entirely covered by them, 

 blue " may be seen on many a mossy being a very mass of yellow bloom." 

 bank ; and in the copses the bluebells The discovery aroused considerable 

 are so abundant that the very heavens interest at the time, and many dis- 

 seem " uprising from the earth." tinguished botanists visited the retired 

 With the coming of May the earlier Essex village to see the plant in its 

 spring flowers are quickly disappearing, native locality. In the adjoining parish 

 The primroses are long past their of Finchingfield, of which the famous 

 prime, and will soon be entirely gone ; Stephen Marshall was Vicar at the time 

 but the oxlip and the cowslip, near of the Commonwealth, the ' Bard- 

 relatives of the primrose, are May- field oxlip," as Darwin calls it, is to 

 flowers. The name " oxlip " is some- be found in several of the woods 

 times applied to hybrids between the and copses. In one spinny, close 

 primrose and the cowslip but the to the old farmhouse where Francis 

 true oxlip, the Primula elatior of Quarles often stayed with his friend 

 Jacquin, is a distinct species, and often Edward Benlowes, and where, accord- 

 occurs in districts, as in parts of ing to tradition, he wrote his Emblems, 

 France and in some of the Swiss the oxlip is abundant. The poet must 

 Alps, where the primrose and cowslip have often seen it ; and so must the 

 are unknown. In England the true strange squire who lived at the Hall 

 oxlip is confined to certain localities hard by, and who, as we learn from 

 in the eastern counties, chiefly in his tablet in the village church, was 

 Essex and Suffolk. The plant was " master of himself so much that 

 first brought before the notice of what others scarce doe by force and 

 English botanists in the year 1842, penalties, He did by a voluntary con- 

 when it was discovered in the wet stancy, Hold his peace for seven years." 

 meadows near the bridge which crosses Unlike the oxlip, the narrow-leaved 

 the river Pant at Great Bardfield lungwort or bugloss-cowslip (Pulmon- 



