240 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



qualify the word intelligence by putting " physical " 

 before it. 



Ere I end this talk of plants and these flowers 

 fancies I must say something of our wonderful bugloss 

 fields in Hampshire. They lie some fourteen miles 

 from the great wood and in a very quiet part of 

 Hampshire. For wild-flower glory I have never seen 

 anything in England to equal the scene in 1907 in 

 one spot on the chalk downs. There the bugloss 

 fields were blue as a clear June sky. The poppy and 

 charlock on poor soils, and the sainfoin and deep red 

 clover on well-farmed ones, and, in the wet, gravelly 

 coppice, the red campion sheeted alongside the blue 

 hyacinth these have long been familiar to me. But 

 bugloss we only look for here and there on the chalk, 

 at most half-a-dozen plants of it together, more often 

 single plants scattered, like the blue succory, along the 

 turf of the road or lane side. At one spot in the 

 chalk downs by Micheldever the chalk being only a 

 few inches below the poor, dry, top soil I found the 

 bugloss covering fairly large patches of ground in 

 1904. Even that was a rare show for bugloss. But 

 since then the plant has thriven and grown ten thou- 

 sandfold till in 1907 it formed two grand fields of 

 azure. 



The blaze of bugloss blue cannot be seen at more 

 than about half a mile away, for the carrying power of 

 this colour in plants is not so strong as that of broom 



