SEPTEMBER 171 



with its scarlet berries ; white valerian and pink hemp 

 agrimony ; yellow marsh Lysimachia and crimson loose- 

 strife all these be flowers of stature. Of more lowly 

 growth are the St. John's worts, golden elecampane, 

 and violet skullcap. This last, however, is not the six- 

 inch dwarf one has seen in the shingle beside a High- 

 land loch; here, heat and moisture have encouraged 

 it to a height of a couple of feet. The glow of colour 

 and the rich setting of reeds and other foliage are what 

 the eye may revel in with content for a long time. 



Then the hedge dividing the osiers from the road is 

 draped with graceful briony and wild clematis. Why 

 is this British clematis, with its wan, inconspicuous 

 flowers, called traveller's joy ? It is the poor relation of 

 the brilliant exotic species, and there are showier herbs 

 in which wayfarers might be expected to take more 

 delight. Across the road yawns a deserted chalk-pit 

 (not the one where the red-backed shrike nested), its 

 entrance guarded by an array of stately mulleins 

 shafts of sulphur-coloured flowers rising from great 

 cushions of grey velvet leaves, broidered round with 

 wild verbena, scabious of lavender hue, and viper's 

 bugloss of intense azure. Farther in there are clusters 

 of the quaint teazle, still carrying its cupped leaf axils 

 full of the shower that fell three days ago. The hollow 

 wood beyond is gay with scarlet fruit-spikes of cuckoo- 

 pint which flowered in April, and beside the river margin 

 the great water-dock has tossed a sanguine spray of 

 seed-vessels far above its noble foliage. Perhaps in no 

 other part of England, notwithstanding the extraordi- 



