1 66 Wild Life in a Southern County 



grass of the green in front of the house (as the snowdrops 

 did also), and here and there a daffodil. These, I think, 

 never look so lovely as when rising from the greensward ; 

 the daffodils grow, too, in the orchard. Woodbine is 

 everywhere climbing over the garden seat under the 

 sycamore tree, whose leaves are spotted sometimes with 

 tiny reddish dots, the honey-dew. 



Just outside the rickyard, where the grass of the 

 meadow has not been mown but fed by cattle, grow the 

 tall buttercups, rising to the knee. The children use the 

 long hollow stems as tubes wherewith to suck up the warm 

 new milk through its crown of thick froth from the oaken 

 milking-pail. There is a fable that the buttercups make 

 the butter yellow when they come but the cows never 

 eat them, being so bitter ; they eat all round close up to 

 the very stems, but leave them standing scrupulously. 

 The children, too, make similar pipes of straw to suck up 

 the new cider fresh from the cider-mill, as it stands in the 

 tubs directly after the grinding. Under the shady trees 

 of the orchard the hare's parsley flourishes, and imme- 

 diately without the orchard edge, on the ' shore ' of the 

 ditch, grow thick bunches of the beautiful blue crane's-bill, 

 or wild geranium, which ought to be a garden flower and 

 not left to the chance mercy of the scythe. There, too, 

 the herb Robert hides, and its foHage, turning colour, lies 

 like crimson lace on the bank. 



Even the tall thistles of the ditch have their beauty 

 the flower has a delicate tint, varying with the species 

 from mauve to purple ; the humble-bee visits every thistle- 

 bloom in his path, and there must therefore be sweetness 

 in it. Then in the autumn issues forth the floating 

 thistledown, streaming through the air and rolling like an 

 aerial ball over the tips of the bennets. Thistledown ih 



