144 MIDSUMMER WEEDS 



will be gone, the grasses will be ripe and withered, and the 

 bracken will be dark and dull. True, on the moorland 

 behind the heather will be in bloom, but it cannot match 

 the crimson of the bell heath which now mantles the 

 rocky knowes, nor the perfume of that exquisite little 

 upland orchis, Habenaria conopsea, whereof there is now 

 such abundance on the dry ground, while its pale and 

 statelier cousin, the butterfly orchis, abounds in the lush 

 hollows. 



Along the side of this road runs a truly brilliant selvage 

 a filagree of golden lady's bedstraw, favourite food for 

 the caterpillars of many of our choicest butterflies ; showers 

 of Scottish bluebells, which you English are never done 

 disputing whether they should be written harebells or 

 hairbells; lobes of crimson clover and brassy bezants of 

 hawkweed; drifts of white galiuin and yellow birdsfoot 

 trefoil : behind them all, along a gray stone wall, crowned 

 with creamy honeysuckle, spires of foxglove singly and in 

 groups. All, or nearly all, this illumination will be ex- 

 tinguished before the hunter's moon rises. 



Beyond the wall the ground falls sharply through an 

 oaken coppice, sprinkled with dainty cow-wheat, to a 

 meadow ; but into that meadow and to the lily-margined 

 river beyond I must not stray, else should I babble of 

 flowering weeds over half a dozen pages. Only one 

 plant let me mention out of the myriads in that moister 

 ground, for it is a quaint one, uncommon withal, and a 

 singular instance of adaptation to unpromising conditions. 

 Most of the large family of St. John's wort are fastidious 

 about drainage, loving dry knolls and banks; but this 

 poor relation, Hypericum elodes, puts up with bogs that 

 will sustain little except the buckbean. The beautiful 



