296 THE LAND'S END 



the effect is far more beautiful on account of the 

 character of the plant the exceeding roughness of 

 its spiny surface, the rude shapes it takes and its 

 darkness, over which the winged flame - coloured 

 blossoms are profusely sprinkled. And when we see 

 many contiguous bushes they do not lose their various 

 individual forms, nor do the blossoms, however abun- 

 dant, unite, as is the case with the broom, into very 

 large masses of brilliant colour. 



I like to come upon a furze-patch growing on a 

 slope, to sit below it and look up over its surface, 

 thrown into more or less rounded forms, broken and 

 roughened into sprays at the top, as of a sea churned 

 by winds and cross-currents to lumpy waves, all 

 splashed and crowned as it were with flame-coloured 

 froth. With a clear blue sky beyond I do not know 

 in all nature a spectacle to excel it in beauty. It is 

 beautiful, perhaps above all things, just because the 

 blossoming furze is not the " sheet of gold " it is often 

 described, but gold of a flame-like brilliance sprinkled 

 on a ground of darkest, harshest green. Sheets of 

 brilliant colour are not always beautiful. I have 

 looked on leagues of forest of Erythrina cmta-galll 

 covering a wet level marsh when the leafless trees were 

 clothed in their blood-red blossoms and have not ad- 

 mired the spectacle. Again, 1 have ridden through 

 immense fields of viper's bugloss, growing as high as 

 the horse's breast and so dense that he could hardly 

 force his way through it, and the sheet of vivid blue 

 in a dazzling sunlight affected me very disagreeably. 

 It is the same with cultivated fields of daffodils, tulips 



