78 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



marsh gentian (Gentiana Pneumonanthe, L.). Its large, 

 bell-shaped, deep blue flowers, striped with green, are 

 among the most beautiful and showy blossoms of the 

 British flora. It is a rare plant too, though often 

 abundant where it occurs. It flowers in August, and 

 such a splendid pageant does it present as to suggest 

 a Swiss pasture rather than an English moor. As an 

 illustration of its attractive beauty it may be recalled 

 that a few years since an Oxford scholar, whose classical 

 attainments are only equalled by his love of botany, 

 actually purchased a stretch of moorland because it 

 possessed a colony of the marsh gentian. 



In a leafy glade not far from Dibden Bottom an 

 encampment of gipsies may mostly be seen. It must 

 be allowed that these nomads add considerably to the 

 picturesqueness of the Forest. A cluster of brown, 

 tattered tents, an iron kettle suspended over a wood 

 fire, the smoke of which curls up leisurely among the 

 trees, the rough ponies and donkeys tethered hard by, 

 the half-naked children, the strapping women moving 

 about with the air and dignity of queens, the tall, 

 loafing men, with their brightly coloured neck-cloths 

 and well-seasoned pipes, reclining carelessly on the 

 ground present a picture of peaceful happiness such 

 as town-dwellers might well envy. But life for the 

 gipsies is not what it was in former times. Since the 

 deer in the Forest have been destroyed their lot is a far 

 harder one. They have now to be contented with a 

 stray fowl for dinner, or a young rabbit, or it may be 

 with a hedgehog baked whole in a coat of clay, and with 

 such provisions as a village shop can supply. 



A Forest stream, red with iron deposits, runs past the 

 gipsy encampment and gives a sense of coolness on the 



