122 MY DEVON YEAR 



faring tree and his cousin the guelder-rose hght the 

 path ; and the wild cherry also, with tassels of drooping 

 flowers. He shines up against the blue sky, like a 

 cloud set on a silver stem, and in his bending blossoms 

 black humble-bees make a pleasant sound. The nettle 

 buds to flower, and the labiate folk — hemp-nettle, 

 hedge - woundwort, betony, and calamint, perhaps 

 even the splendid bastard balm — make ready. This 

 last, indeed, will soon open his pale rosy trumpets — 

 a very fair and rare thing that nestles in lonely old 

 lanes upon the confines of ancient woods, and shares 

 the same with the starry ramsons and the twayblade, 

 with the columbine, the mountain willow-herb, and 

 wood loosestrife. 



Of ferns the dusky ceterach, his under-leaf, dor- 

 mouse-colour, opens in the old masonry beside the 

 wall-spleenworts ; and polypody creeps along the 

 oak-branch with sure foothold in the mosses there ; 

 brake-ferns uncurl their silver crooks among the blue- 

 bells on the hedge-top, and the English maidenhair 

 spleenwort and black spleenwort flourish below. The 

 shield-fern, the male-fern, and the lady-fern are here 

 also, with countless hart's - tongues and other less 

 common of the clan. 



Then comes June, when all Nature is lyric, when 

 constellations of great and lesser starry stitchwort 

 shine from little blue skies of speedwells, when 

 buttercups and silver- weed below and goldilocks * and 



* Goldilocks, the ranunculus so called. 



