112 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



so wide apart in our minds as eagle Two centuries and a half ago a writer 



and dove. Aquilegia, because the in- on plants spoke of it as " a certaine 



verted tubes at the base of the flower strange flower which is called by some 



are like the curved claws of an eagle ; Fritillaria." Another very old name, 



and columbine, from its dove-like ap- which I like best, is chequered daffo- 



pearance, each blossom forming a clus- dil. As a garden flower we know it, 



ter of five dark-blue fairy fantails, and we also know the wild flower 



with beaks that meet at the stem, bought in shops or sent as a gift from 



wings open, and tails outspread. friends at a distance. In most in- 



No more columbines were found, stances the flowers I have seen in houses 



although I looked and inquired for we re from the Christchurch meadows 



them in all that part of the country ; at Oxford. 



but at one spot, a small village about 



I know what white, what purple fritillaries 



four miles from the furze where they The grassy harvest of the river-fields 



n i j T i.iji.j.1- Above by Ensham, down by Sandford. yields, 

 flourished, I was told by the cottagers 



that up to within three seasons ago says Matthew Arnold in his beautiful 



they, too, had had columbines. They monody ; the wonder is that it should 



grew abundantly in a furze patch and yield so many. But to see the flower 



by a hedge half a mile from the vil- in its native river-fields is the main 



lage : it had always been so, and every thing ; in a vase, on a table, in a dim 



summer the children went out to room it is no better than a blushing 



gather them, so that they were seen in briar-rose or any other lovely wild 



every cottage, and as a result of this bloom removed from its proper atmo- 



misuse the flower has been extirpated, sphere and surroundings. 



If comparatively few persons have It was but a twelvemonth before 



seen the blue native columbine, just first finding wild columbine that I had 



as few, perhaps, have found, growing the happiness of seeing this better 



wild, that more enchanting flower, the flower in its green home, a spot where 



snake's-head or fritillary. Guinea- it is, perhaps, more abundant than 



flower and bastard narcissus and tur- anywhere in England ; but the spot I 



key-caps are some of its old English will not name, nor even' the county ; 



names, the last still in common use ; the locality is not given in the books 



but the name by which all educated I have consulted, yet it is, alas ! too 



persons now call it is also very old. well known to many whose only plea- 



