$"!)e Spring OTfltr JFlotoers. 75 



isolated specimen. It has a pleasant way of 

 surprising one, peering at you over precipitous 

 banks, suddenly springing from some lonely hol- 

 low, or startling you by its snowy whiteness on 

 some meadow or pasture. Have you wondered 

 at the symmetry of many of these patriarchal 

 pasture thorns ? the cattle have manipulated 

 the pruning-shears. I think a gnarled old thorn, 

 standing sentinel over a hill-pasture, the most 

 picturesque of trees. For a century, perhaps, it 

 has buffeted the wintry blasts, and escaped the 

 shafts of the lightning, still to simulate perpet- 

 ual youth in its perpetual bloom. The ground 

 around it has been worn and trodden by count- 

 less hoofs ; and on sweltering midsummer days 

 the cattle ruminate, and lash their tails, beneath 

 its woof of shade. It is the next thing to the 

 shaded stream with white water-lily cups to keep 

 it cool. 



You look for the shad-blow with the snowy 

 drifts of the Trillium and the running yellow 

 flames of the marsh-marigold (Caltha palus- 

 tris), that 



Shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray. 



Hamerton calls the leaves of the water-ranun- 

 culus " the most beautiful of all greens in the 

 world." Strange that he should have excluded 



