134 Railway Birds and Flowers 



such splendid plumes of yellow by the side of the 

 passing train. The gorse is at its height a little 

 before the broom ; but the gorse, for all its spiny 

 hardihood of appearance, is a delicate plant, and 

 rarely seems to flourish on the composite and 

 artificial soils of the railway embankment, or in 

 reach of the engine's trail of steam, with the same 

 luxuriance which it shows in its virgin haunts. 

 Yet both the large spring-blooming species of gorse 

 and the smaller kind, which flowers in late summer 

 and early autumn, do much from their very pro- 

 fusion and mass to brighten the iron path. For 

 glimpses of sheeted bluebells the traveller must 

 look, as a rule, not on the actual margins of the 

 line, but on the slopes a little beyond. These 

 shade-loving flowers like a denser growth of pro- 

 tecting foliage than is compatible with railroad 

 maintenance. 



As midsummer draws near, the grassy slopes 

 of the railway become covered with a beautiful 

 combination of the tall flowers of the hayfield and 

 the rich though lowlier growths which cling to the 

 short turf of the cliff, to the open down, or to 

 herb-scented clearings in the woodlands. The 

 commoner flowers, growing in sheets and bands, 

 form striking contrasts of colour, which impress 

 themselves all the more vividly on the eye in 

 proportion to the speed of the train's passage, and 

 the consequent substitution of broad effects for 

 detail. One of the commonest of these contrasts 

 is formed by the tall, white moon-daisies, growing 

 in company with red clover on the slopes of thicker 



