38 THE WILD GARDEN. 



shorn hedges that seam the land, often (heaping them with 

 such innnitable grace that half the ecjuservatories in the 

 country, with their collections of small red pots and small 

 mean plants are stiff and poor compared with a few yards' 

 length of their blossomy verdure. The Wild Eoses, Purple 

 Vetch, Honeysuckle, and the Virgin's Bower, clamber above 

 smaller, but not less pretty, wildlings, and throw a veil of 

 graceful life over the mutilated shrubs, reminding us of the 

 plant-life in the nest-like thickets of dwarf shrubs that one 

 often meets on the Ingh Alpine meadows. Tn these islets of 

 bushes in a sea of grass one may gather Howers after they 

 have been all browsed down on the turf. Next to the most 

 interesting aspects of Alpine vegetation, there is perhaps 

 nothing in the world of plant-life more lovely than the delicate 

 tracery of low -climbing things wedded to the bushes in all 

 northern and temperate regions of the earth. Perishing like the 

 grass, they are happy and safe in the earth's Ijosom in winter ; 

 in spring they come up as the buds swell, and soon after, 

 finding the bushes once more enjoyable, rush over them as 

 joyously as children from school over a meadow of cowslips. 

 Over bush, over brake, on mountain or lowland copse, holding 

 on with delicate but unyielding grasp, they engrave themselves 

 on the mind as the central type of grace. In addition to 

 climbing Pea-flowers, Convolvuluses, etc., of which the stems 

 perish in winter, we have the great tribes of wild vines, noble 

 in foliage and often in fruit, the numerous Honeysuckles, 

 from coral red to pale yellow, all beautiful ; and the Clema- 

 tidie, rich, varied, and lovely beyond description, from those 

 of which each petal reminds one of the wing of some huge 



