240 Summer's Afterglow 



blossoms on short and tender stems. In mild 

 winters, and in a soft southern or western climate, 

 this autumn blossoming of the primrose will not be 

 entirely checked before the regular time of its spring 

 bloom in the following year. This flowering of the 

 primrose has all the character of the beginning of 

 the new season of bloom, and is not merely such 

 a fitful aftermath of summer as the October blos- 

 soming of the foxglove, and of the meadowsweet 

 and purple loosestrife among the rank autumnal 

 grasses of the stream-side. Probably there is no 

 month when the wild primrose is not blooming 

 somewhere in the British Isles. In August, among 

 the deer-grass and heather by a Hebridean trout- 

 loch, the last blossom of the wind-beaten island 

 spring may still be found, tarnished and half faded, 

 among the leaves grown coarse and long; and in 

 September, if not in the dewy mornings at the end 

 of August, the first blossoms of the new season's 

 growth expand among the little leaves, curled like 

 a drake's tail, in some mossy corner of a Sussex 

 hazel-copse. 



But the most splendid of all displays which the 

 wild flowers spread beneath the clear October sun 

 is found on the moorlands, commons, and cliff- 

 slopes, where the purple of the slowly fading heather 

 is mingled with the gold of the autumn-blooming 

 furze. The furze which is at the height of its bloom 

 in early October is a different species from the larger 

 and more conspicuous kind, of which the flowering 

 season is in spring. It is a dwarf by the side of the 

 other, few of its sprays rising more than three feet 



