374 



AUTUMN AND WINTER 



study a hedge-bank full of those thrusting points and to 

 observe their various experiences in making their way into 

 the world. The strength with which they will thrust up a 

 dry clod is surprising. After they are fairly through the 

 ground, and have done their work of penetration, the spikes 

 fall apart into their component leaves, among which the 

 flower-stem will rise later. By the hollow sides of flowing 



ditches the marsh marigold lifts its firm 

 but miniature leaves and buds, which 

 will gradually swell till the time of 

 flowering is come. Cow-parsley multi- 

 plies in the drier ditches its heads of 

 fine-cut foliage, as luxuriant as the 

 more solid shoots of the marigold and 

 arum. The rings of little blue-green 

 leaves which have hung since Christmas 

 on the ropelike honeysuckle stems 

 grow very gradually larger as the 

 weeks of February draw on ; and the 

 sparse rods of the elder begin to show 



the dark buds give birth to bright leaf- 



tufts. A new spring lustre comes to the grass on the 

 warm banks and in the sheltered corners of the fields; 

 the beauty of mere grass is often ignored, yet no plant 

 is more delicate and lustrous, or more characteristic of 

 Nature in England. The front of the hedge is hung 

 with hazel-catkins brightening as the days go by, and 

 growing mealier and brighter as the scales open and show 

 the pollen stored beneath them. Far back in August 

 and early September the catkins of the coming year were 

 beginning to swell in the shadow of the still untarnished 

 leaves. By Christmas in mild corners of the lanes they 



