190 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



times go to the churchyards to search for it. Plan- 

 tains and docks, "wild spurge, hops climbing up a dead 

 fir tree, a well-chosen pole for them nothing is 

 omitted. Even the silver weed, the dusty-looking 

 foliage which is thrust asida as you walk on the 

 footpath by the road is here labelled with truth as 

 "cosmopolitan" of habit. 



Bird's-foot lotus, another Downside plant, lights up 

 the stones put to represent rockwork with its yellow. 

 Saxifrage, and stone-crop and house-leek are here 

 in variety. Buttercups occupy a whole patch a 

 little garden to themselves. What would the hay- 

 makers say to such a sight? Little, too, does the 

 mower reck of the number, variety, and beauty of 

 the grasses in a single armful of swathe, such as he 

 gathers up to cover his jar of ale with and keep it 

 cool by the hedge. The bennets, the flower of the 

 grass, on their tall stalks, go down in numbers as 

 countless as the sand of the seashore before his 

 scythe. 



But here the bennets are watched and tended, the 

 weeds removed from around them, and all the grasses 

 of the field cultivated as affectionately as the finest 

 rose. There is something cool and pleasant in this 

 green after the colours of the herbs in flower, though 

 each grass is but a bunch, yet it has with it something 

 of the sweetness of the meadows by the brooks. 

 Juncus, the rush, is here, a sign often welcome to- 

 cattle, for they know that water must be near; the 

 bunch is cut down, and the white pith shows, but it 

 will speedily be up again ; horse-tails, too, so thick in 

 marshy places one small species is abundant in the 



