216 THE OPEN AIR. 



In these fields outside London the flowers are 

 peculiarly rich in colour. The common mallow, 

 whose flower is usually a light mauve, has here a 

 deep, almost purple bloom; the bird's-foot lotus 

 is a deep orange. The figwort, which is generally 

 two or three feet high, stands in one ditch fully eight 

 feet, and the stem is more than half an inch square. 

 A fertile soil has doubtless something to do with this 

 colour and vigour. The red admiral butterflies, too, 

 seemed in the summer more brilliant than usual. 

 One very fine one, whose broad wings stretched out 

 like fans, looked simply splendid floating round and 

 round the willows which marked the margin of a 

 dry pool. His blue markings were really blue blue 

 velvet his red, and the white stroke shone as if 

 sunbeams were in his wings. I wish there were more 

 of these butterflies ; in summer, dry summer, when 

 the flowers seem gone and the grass is not so dear 

 to us, and the leaves are dull with heat, a little 

 colour is so pleasant. To me, colour is a sort of 

 food ; every spot of colour is a drop of wine to the 

 spirit. I used to take my folding-stool on those long, 

 heated days, which made the summer of 1884 so 

 conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow of 

 a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their 

 shadow was nearly as hot as the open sunshine ; the 

 dry leaves did not absorb the heat that entered them, 

 and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up as 

 the sun poured it down. Dry, dead leaves dead 

 with heat, as with frost strewed the grass, dry, too, 

 and withered at my feet. 



But among the cabbages, which were very small, 



