182 A GLANCE AT BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 



from Scotland, the fox-glove (digitalis) traveled as 

 fast as I did, and I found it just as abundant in the 

 southern counties as in the northern. This is the 

 most beautiful and conspicuous of all the wild flow- 

 ers I saw a spire of large purple bells rising above 

 the ferns and copses and along the hedges every- 

 where. Among the copses of Surrey and Hants, I 

 saw it five feet high, and amid the rocks of North 

 Wales still higher. We have no conspicuous wild 

 flower that compares with it. It is so showy and 

 abundant that the traveler on the express train can- 

 not miss it ; while the pedestrian finds it lining his 

 way like rows of torches. The bloom creeps up the 

 stalk gradually as the season advances, taking from 

 a month to six weeks to go from the bottom to the 

 top, making at all times a most pleasing gradation 

 of color, and showing the plant each day with new 

 flowers and a fresh, new look. It never looks shabby 

 and spent, from first to last. The lower buds open 

 the first week in June, and slowly the purple wave 

 creeps upward ; bell after bell swings to the bee 

 and moth, till the end of July, when you see the 

 stalk waving in the wind with two or three flowers 

 at the top, as perfect and vivid as those that opened 

 first. I wonder the poets have not mentioned it 

 oftener. Tennyson speaks of " the fox-glove spire." 

 I note this allusion in Keats : 



" Where the deer's swift leap 

 Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell," 



and this from Coleridge : 



