The Fringe of the Road 99 



fields, a remnant of the original face of the land is 

 still preserved on the border of the highway. By 

 the pale roads that cross the high sheep-walks of 

 the Cotswold Hills there are wide strips of primitive 

 pasturage that grow brilliant every year after mid- 

 summer with league-long gardens of wild flowers. 

 Ages of grazing and culture have brought the 

 blossoms into abeyance on the other side of the 

 dry, stone walls ; but here, protected from all dis- 

 turbance in the loneliness of the ample landscape, 

 they wash the roadside with their clear, upland 

 colours, and cherish in the herbage and hollows 

 their own bird and insect life. The mellow lime- 

 stone walls are crowned with blue masses of the 

 great meadow geranium, waving in the summer 

 wind against the long sweep of the sky. The same 

 beautiful blossoms shine in many patches on the 

 turf below, often gaining an added lightness and 

 brightness from a background of reddish soil and 

 yellow stones. The turf is thickly spangled with 

 golden rock-roses, purple heads of thyme, and 

 other minuter flowers. Tall belts of fennel draw 

 clouds of butterflies to their yellow tops ; and 

 everywhere upon the grasses runs the bloom of 

 the two common bedstraws, like white and yellow 

 foam. 



Where the scenery and life of the country are still 

 but little changed by man, the fringe of the road 

 brings its details to the traveller's very feet. In 

 July and August after nightfall the grassy border 

 is a favourite haunt of glow-worms. They shine 

 beside his road with a light that varies from a blue- 



