290 THE LAND'S END 



was at last regarded as among the best in the land. 

 For it had entered into my soul, and was among 

 flowers an equal of the briar rose and honeysuckle 

 in the English hedges and of the pale and vari- 

 coloured Cornish heath as I saw it in August in 

 lonely places among the Goonhilly Downs in the 

 Lizard district, and, like that heath, it had become 

 for ever associated in my mind with the thought 

 of Cornwall. 



Its charm was due both to its sky-colour and 

 perfume and its curious habit of growing just so far 

 and no further from the edge of the cliff, so that 

 when I walked by the sea I had that blue-flecked path 

 constantly before me. One day I made the remark 

 mentally that it appeared as if the sky itself, the genius 

 or blue lady of the sky, had come down to walk by the 

 sea and had left that sky-colour on the turf where she 

 had trailed her robe, and this shade or quality of the 

 hue set me thinking of a chapter I once wrote on the 

 " Secret of the Charm of Flowers " (Birds and Man, 

 pp. 140-62), in which the peculiar pleasure which cer- 

 tain flowers produce in us was traced to their human 

 colouring in other words, the expression was due to 

 human associations. Some of my friends would not 

 accept this view, and although I still believe it the 

 right one I became convinced in the course of the 

 argument of a grave omission in my account of the 

 blue flower that it was unconsciously associated 

 with the blue eye in man and received its distinctive 

 expression from this cause alone. One of my corre- 

 spondents, anxious to prove me wrong, quoted an 



