122 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



at a time as though carven of white- mixed thickets on the chalk. The 

 ness ; and when in autumn the dying dogwood, too, is a specially chalk- 

 leaves curl each together like a shell, in loving shrub, though, in a more or less 

 breeze and calm alike they form wide introduced and fostered state, it does 

 splashes of cold and surf-like grey, much to brighten the hedgerows in 

 Under the dark yew-caverns and spires many districts with its small discs 

 of juniper, the chalk-pits shine milk- of milky flowers, and flat compact 

 white and clear; against the denser clusters of dusky berries. The spindle- 

 blackness there gleams the cold silver wood, generally a spare bush of hedge- 

 of those withering leaves, and the row growth, but occasionally found as 

 shining seed-beards of the traveller's a tree, is among the dullest-looking 

 joy ; and where a stray limb of beech of all our shrubs in its summer dress ; 

 or hawthorn hangs out an autumn but it makes fullest amends when its 

 banner of amber or crimson in the sun, bare, wiry boughs are gemmed in 

 this core of vivid splendour among all winter with the rich pink berries that 

 such puritan tones seems to string split symmetrically to show the orange 

 them to their utmost expression of seeds within. Another common hedge- 

 clean and uplifting contrast. row bush which sometimes grows to a 

 Scarcer shrubs that also love the middle-sized tree is the true British 

 chalk are the common kind of buck- maple, the only native species of this 

 thorn, with its trusses of yellowish tribe ; it has loose clusters of yellow- 

 flowers, and brown-black berries in green flowers at midsummer, which 

 autumn, that yield a strong greenish develop winged seeds smaller than 

 dye ; the privet, which often grows those of the sycamore, though like in 

 wild in the mixed growth of the hedge- shape ; and the leaves also are much 

 belts of the lower slopes, and fills the smaller, and more deeply lobed. The 

 thicket with the dubious fragrance of mountain representative of the lowland 

 its white blossoms in July; and the whitebeam, service, and wayfaring trees 

 frilled, early-blooming spurge-laurel, is the mountain ash or rowan, so well 

 which ranks with the spiny butcher's known both in Scotland and south of 

 broom as among the smallest of British the border as the companion of the wild 

 plants with a claim to the name of moorland birch, and of the alder and 

 shrubs. In its chief wild haunt in aspen by the tumbling, rock-bound 

 Britain, the box also grows in large streams where the heather nods on the 



