8o 



AUTUMN AND WINTER 



crowfoot and cherry blossom, and many other flowers of 

 spring. Milfoil, or yarrow, still puts up a few heads of 

 white blossom in the pasture-fields and among the roadside 

 grass ; but this too, like the white convolvulus stretching 

 from the shadows, is a hardy relic of an earlier epoch, and 

 blooms too rarely to give character to the colour of the 

 time. 



In September the dominant hue of the flowers is some 

 shade of purple or lilac ; and next to this comes yellow, 



which is the most persistent 

 colour at all seasons of the 

 year. But whereas in May the 

 chief colours were yellow and 

 white, so that the yellow butter- 

 cups gave the deepest note to 

 the landscape, now the ragwort 

 and hawkweeds and dwarf 

 autumn gorse supply a clearer 

 contrast to the rich tones of lilac 

 and purple. Moors and com- 

 mons are still flushed with deep 

 purple bell-heather and the paler 

 starry ling. By pools and quieter 

 streams the deep banks of summer 

 verdure are stained with the mauve plumes of the tall hemp 

 agrimony and lingering masses of purple loosestrife and 

 willowherb. Beneath them and in their fringes the humbler 

 mint-plants lift blossoms of the same prevailing hue. All the 

 streamside blossom that catches the eye readily from a little 

 distance is now of this colour ; and it is the same when we pass 

 from the watersides to the commons and upland fields. The 

 autumn or devil's bit scabious blooms in wide stretches of bluish 

 lilac, mingled here and there with ling and heather, or tinged 



HEMP AGRIMONY 



