188 A GLANCE AT BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 



it gives to the oat-fields a fresh canary yellow. Then 

 men and boys walk carefully through the drilled grain 

 and pull the mustard out, and carry it away, leaving 

 not one blossom visible. 



On the whole, I should say that the British wild 

 flowers were less beautiful than our own, but more 

 abundant and noticeable, and more closely associated 

 with the country life of the people ; just as their 

 birds are more familiar, abundant, and vociferous 

 than our songsters, but not so sweet-voiced and plain- 

 tively melodious. An agreeable coarseness and ro- 

 bustness characterize most of their flowers, and they 

 more than make up in abundance where they lack in 

 grace. 



The surprising delicacy of our first spring flowers, 

 of the hepatica, the spring beauty, the arbutus, the 

 bloodroot, the rue-anemone, the dicentra, a beauty 

 and delicacy that pertains to exclusive wood forms, 

 contrasts with the more hardy, hairy, hedgerow look 

 of their firstlings of the spring, like the primrose, the 

 hyacinth, the wood spurge, the green hellebore, the 

 hedge garlic, the moschatel, the daffodil, the celan- 

 dine, and others. Most of these flowers take one 

 by their multitude ; the primrose covers broad hedge 

 banks for miles as with a carpet of bloom. In my 

 excursions into field and forest I saw nothing of the 

 intense brilliancy of our cardinal flower, which al- 

 most baffles the eye ; nothing 'with the wild grace of 

 our meadow or mountain lilies ; no wood flower so 

 taking to the eye as our painted trillium and lady's- 



