APRIL 89 



hillside, an oakwood at the foot, and a couple of level 

 fields beyond. Water-loving plants have been accom- 

 modated by the excavation of two or three ponds in 

 the gravel, and in this month the surface of one of 

 these is closely studded with white blossoms of the 

 Cape pondweed (Aponogeton distachyon), and the air 

 is loaded with their perfume of mingled hawthorn and 

 bitter almonds. But it is in the wood that, at this 

 season, the choicest flowers are to be found ; charming 

 surprises abound there at every turn of the narrow 

 tracks ; for there delicate petals may expand without 

 risk of searing wind, and the sunshine is filtered gently 

 through the bare oak boughs. There are glades of 

 narcissus, not only the common English daffodil, dear 

 to Herrick and Wordsworth (than which none can be 

 more perfect), but also the many forms into which it 

 has sported, as well as distinct species, such as bicolor, 

 with golden tube and broad creamy sepals, and its 

 grander variety, Horsfieldii ; pallid, nodding cernuus] 

 graceful incomparabilis in many shades, and its double 

 form, ' butter-and-eggs ' ; the quaint bulbocodium, or 

 hoop petticoat, golden or primrose-hued ; the delicate 

 cyclamineus, with sepals smartly reflexed ; and, rarest 

 of all, the tiny minimus, ' whose nose,' saith Parkinson, 

 ' doth mostly rest upon the ground.' All these gain a 

 degree of grace in this woodland, which those who have 

 seen them only in formal borders can scarcely realise. 



Then there are sheets of anemones not only our 

 native wood species, with white or flushed flowers, but 

 its near relative, equally hardy and profuse in bloom, 



