THROUGH THE YEAR 69 



THE HAY FIELD'S TINY FLOWERS 



The rough hay field on the sandy hills and hollows 

 is not a place to miss just before the coarse mixed 

 crop goes down. Among fescue and foxtail grasses 

 and the red glow of sorrel seed is a miniature flora 

 of exceeding beauty. But it has to be searched into, 

 has to be sought out in littlest, ere its choiceness 

 can be understood. We are driven to the magni- 

 fying glass the eye is almost powerless without 

 this aid. 



Wandering knee-deep in these dusty highways 

 of the hay, I find the corn spurrey in patches every- 

 where, the lesser stitchwort so abounding that on 

 many a yard of earth there must have been a thous- 

 and of its blossoms. At one edge of the field, in a 

 moist spot, alkanet, our lesser bugloss, was peeping 

 through the tangle of spurrey and chickweed and 

 storks-bill. Veronica speedwell has not a purer 

 blue than little bugloss, azure of the azure. Bugloss 

 can be admired to the full without the glass. But 

 not so the pearlworts and sandworts and spurreys. 

 Until the glass guides the eye to the centre of the 

 spurrey's petals, we cannot realise the beauty and 

 perfection of the blossom, its delicate veining, its 

 coloured stamens and pistils, and the glistening 

 stores of nectar there to draw the insect. It is the 

 same with the deep-cleft petals of lesser stitchwort, 

 ten of them, how finely pointed ! 



The least bird's foot trefoil grows at the field edge. 

 Of all these miniature blossoms, here perhaps is the 



