COUNTRY HARVESTS 23 5 



butterfly. Some day, perhaps, we shall plant our hedge 

 rows as we plant an orchard with the better sorts of 

 blackberry, with sweet, or cider apples, with cobnuts and 

 bullace plums ; but if we do, as some recommend, they 

 will hardly remain the quiet sanctuaries they have been, 

 broken occasionally and at short seasons by the nutters 

 and blackberriers. 



2. 



Which corner of England is the best, which prater 

 omnes angulos ridet&amp;gt; in the eyes of those who go forth to see 

 what Lord de Tabley called the &quot; Royal Pageant of the 

 Earth &quot; in autumn ? Even a London or suburban park 

 may register a claim : Hyde Park, Kew Gardens, or 

 Dulwich. In parts of South London trees grow pecul 

 iarly tall, and certain rarities are to be found such as the 

 Judas tree by the Dulwich picture gallery. The exotic 

 creeper has given a claim even to small town houses to 

 set up in rivalry of the Alleghany mountains ; and no 

 &quot; flower in a crannied wall &quot; suggests more problems than 

 the so-called Ampelopsis Veitchii. It is a compass, 

 always turning when it can to the North ; the green of 

 the leaf flows back into the stem almost at a gallop, and 

 leaves every sort of shade of &quot; hectic red &quot; behind it, 

 from deep purple to light pink, fading away into pure 

 pallor. It strangely doubles the process common to other 

 trees that cast their leaves. A little corky growth at the 

 tip of the stem throws off the gorgeous leaf, so that for 

 a while the creeper has the ludicrous appearance of a 

 spiny caterpillar. The pink and white leaf stalks, awk 

 wardly left behind, stick out at a sharp and foolish angle, 

 till after a day or two these, too, are thrust off to join the 

 leaf. Perhaps some super-Darwinian can explain what 



