276 THE LAND'S END 



a district comparatively flowerless for many months, 

 as I have said, there are flowers to be seen if looked 

 for pretty well all the year round. Just now, before 

 sitting down to write this chapter at the windy bleak 

 Land's End, a very few days before Christmas, I 

 went out in the late afternoon, and seeing herb-robert 

 looking very pretty in the shelter of a stone hedge, 

 then some other small flower, and then others, I began 

 idly plucking a spray or two of each, and after cross- 

 ing three or four fields and home again I found that 

 my little bouquet contained blooms of seventeen dif- 

 ferent species. If I had gone on a few fields further 

 the number might have been twenty-five or thirty. 

 These little summer and autumn flowers that bloom 

 on till frosts come are all of very common kinds, 

 except, perhaps, the yellow pansy which is confined 

 to the western extremity of the county. There are 

 other flowers proper to the early spring which were 

 a delight to me and which will ever be associated in 

 my mind with the thoughts of Cornwall. 



Curiously enough the one which comes first to my 

 mind is a plant universally despised and disliked by 

 the common people and, for all I know to the con- 

 trary, by the people who are not common : they speak 

 of it as a " weed " and a " nuisance " ; nor is it a 

 spring or summer flower but blooms in midwinter. 

 It is already coming out now and before the middle 

 of January will be in full bloom. This is the sweet- 

 scented colt's-foot, sometimes called winter heliotrope, 

 on account both of the purple colour and powerful 

 scent of the flower. The books say that it smells of 



