330 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
and of the wild hyacinth seen in sheets of colour 
under the woodland trees. These are the floral blues 
that bring heaven down to us. . 
It is not strange perhaps that this flower should 
be known by bird names, but it is odd that the 
names should be of birds so wide apart in our 
minds as eagle and dove. Aquilegia, because the 
inverted tubes at the base of the flower are like 
the curved claws of an eagle; and columbine from 
its dove-like appearance, each blossom forming a 
cluster of fine dark blue fairy fan-tails, with beaks 
that meet at the stem, wings open, and tails out- 
spread. 
This great find made me think that I had come 
into a columbine country, and I set out to look for 
it, but failed to find or even hear of it anywhere in 
that district except at one spot on the border of 
Wilts and Dorset. This was a tiny rustic village 
hidden among high downs, one of the smallest, 
loveliest, most out-of-the-world villages in England. 
In the small ancient church I found a mural tablet 
to the memory of the poet Browning’s grandfather, 
whose humble life had been spent in that neigh- 
bourhood. So rare was it for a stranger to appear 
in this lost village that half of the population, all 
the forty schoolchildren included, were eager to 
talk to me all the time I spent in it, and they all 
knew all about the columbine. It had _ been 
abundant half a mile from the village by the hedges 
and among the furze bushes, and every summer 
the children were accustomed to go out and gather 
