184 A GLANCE AT BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 



sings Tennyson. I saw it blooming, with the daisy 

 and the buttercup, upon the grave of Carlyle. The 

 tender human and poetic element of this stern rocky 

 nature was well expressed by it. 



In the Lake district I saw meadows purple with a 

 species of wild geranium, probably geranium pratens. 

 It answered well to our wild geranium, which in 

 May sometimes covers wettish meadows in the same 

 manner, except that this English species was of a 

 dark-blue purple. Prunella, I noticed, was of a much 

 deeper purple there than at home. The purple or- 

 chids also were stronger colored, but less graceful and 

 pleasing, than our own. One species which I noticed 

 in June, with habits similar to our purple-fringed 

 orchis, perhaps the pyramidal orchis, had quite a 

 coarse, plebeian look. Probably the most striking 

 blue and purple wild flowers we have are of Eu- 

 ropean origin, as succory, blue weed or bugloss, ver- 

 vain, purple loosestrife, and harebell. These colors, 

 except with the fall asters and gentians, seem rather 

 unstable in our flora. 



It has been observed by the Norwegian botanist 

 Schiibeler that plants and trees in the higher lati- 

 tudes have larger leaves and larger flowers than far- 

 ther south, and that many flowers which are white 

 in the south become violet in the far north. This 

 agrees with my own observation. The feebler light 

 necessitates more leaf surface, and the fewer insects 

 necessitate larger and moro showy flowers to attract 

 them and secure cross fertilization. Blackberry 



