166 FRESH FIELDS 



ern. This is the most beautiful and conspicuous of 

 all the wild flowers I saw, — a spire of large purple 

 bells rising above the ferns and copses and along 

 the hedges everywhere. Among the copses of Sur- 

 rey and Hants, I saw it five feet high, and amid 

 the rocks of North Wales still higher. We have 

 no conspicuous wild flower that compares with it. 

 It is so showy and abundant that the traveler on 

 the express train cannot miss it; while the pedes- 

 trian finds it lining his way like rows of torches. 

 The bloom creeps up the stalk gradually as the 

 season advances, taking from a month to six weeks 

 to go from the bottom to the top, making at all 

 times a most pleasing gradation of color, and show- 

 ing the plant each day with new flowers and a 

 fresh, new look. It never looks shabby and spent, 

 from first to last. The lower buds open the first 

 week in June, and slowly the purple wave creeps 

 upward; bell after bell swings to the bee and moth, 

 till the end of July, when you see the stalk waving 

 in the wind with two or three flowers at the top, 

 as perfect and vivid as those that opened first. I 

 wonder the poets have not mentioned it oftener. 

 Tennyson speaks of "the foxglove spire." I note 

 this allusion in Keats : — 



"Where the deer's swift leap 

 Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell," 



and this from Coleridge : — 



" The fox-glove tall 

 Sheds its loose purple bells or in the gust, 

 Or when it bends beneath the upspringing lark, 

 Or mountain finch alighting." 



