SOME EARLY FLOWERS 283 



flower. But the yellow is the furze, so important a 

 flower in this part of England and so much to me, 

 that it must have a chapter to itself, so that in this 

 chapter there will be but one described ; but I shall 

 speak of others incidentally and of several things 

 besides. 



In my early spring rambles I found that blue 

 flowers were more abundant than all of other colours 

 put together ; but this was in the rough places and 

 lanes and by the stone and furze hedges. Here in 

 places almost all the flowers appeared to be blue, 

 from the tall blue columbine to the small ground ivy 

 and the tiniest veronica. Of these I think the most 

 remarkable was the wild hyacinth on account of its 

 habit of growing on the tops of the old stone hedges. 

 The effect is not so charming as when we see them 

 covering the ground under the trees ; but it is most 

 singular and beautiful too when the band of blue has 

 the furze bushes covered with yellow blossoms for 

 background. 



One April day I had a talk with a native about the 

 blue flowers which were abundant and in great variety 

 at the side of the path. This was on the slope of a 

 hill looking to the sea, about a mile from Mousehole. 

 I saw a girl crossing a grass field, and as she was 

 making for a gate opening on to the path, I waited 

 for her and when she came out we went on together 

 for some distance. She had been to take her father 

 his dinner in a field where he was working and was 

 now on her way back to their cottage. Her age was 

 about nineteen or twenty and she was of the most 



