A GLANCE AT BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 183 



" The fox-glove tall 



Sheds its loose purple bells or in the gust, 

 Or when it bends beneath the upspringing lark, 

 Or mountain finch alighting." 



Coleridge perhaps knew that the lark did not perch 

 upon the stalk of the fox-glove, or upon any other 

 stalk or branch, being entirely a ground bird and not 

 a percher, but he would seem to imply that it did, 

 in these lines. 



A London correspondent calls my attention to these 

 lines from Wordsworth : 



" ' Bees that soar 



High as the highest peak of Furness Fells, 

 Yet murmur by the hour in foxglove bells ; ' " 



and adds : " Less poetical, but as graphic, was a Dev- 

 onshire woman's comparison of a dull preacher to a 

 6 Drummle drane in a pop ; ' Anglice, A drone in a 

 foxglove, called a pop from children amusing them- 

 selves with popping its bells." 



The prettiest of all humble roadside flowers I saw 

 was the little blue speedwell. I was seldom out of 

 sight of it anywhere in my walks till near the end of 

 June ; while its little bands and assemblages ef deep- 

 blue flowers in the grass by the roadside, turning a 

 host of infantile faces up to the sun, often made me 

 pause and admire. It is prettier than the violet, and 

 larger and deeper-colored than our houstonia. It is a 

 small and delicate edition of our hepatica, done in, 

 indigo blue and wonted to the grass in the fields and 

 by the waysides. 



"The little speedwell's darling blue," 



