Blossomed Boughs 73 



the wayfaring tree, and is found in the same haunts, 

 it belongs, like the service tree and the hawthorn, 

 to the great order of the roses. Its heads of pearl- 

 white blossoms smell much like primroses. The 

 privet is also common on the chalk hills, which from 

 their more southern situation add an individual 

 richness to the flora which they share with the 

 limestone. That rare native, the box, finds one of 

 its chief haunts on the chalk soil of Box-hill ; and 

 the same white rock is a favourite home of the 

 spindle tree, which is so brilliant in autumn with its 

 split berries of pink and orange, though it bears a 

 dull little blossom. The wild clematis, or traveller's 

 joy, is also a thorough native of the chalk and 

 limestone soils, though it is to be found even on the 

 brick earths of the Essex marshes. Like the honey- 

 suckle, it is, in strictness, scarcely a shrub ; but both 

 plants lend in their season no less striking a beauty 

 to English woods and hedges than the elder or the 

 Yuletide holly. Nearly the smallest, but also nearly 

 the most splendid, of all our flowering shrubs are 

 the golden broom and furze. The common furze's 

 great flowering time comes in spring, when it mingles 

 both with the blackthorn and the hawthorn bloom ; 

 but the dwarf furze has scarcely ended its autumn 

 blossoming before the taller bushes are again lighting 

 a spark, thus keeping the fire of bloom alive on 

 English bushes through all the months of the year. 



