322 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



myriads of seeds which would produce another 

 undesirable but exceedingly beautiful crop the 

 following summer. The lazy stay-in-bed-for- 

 seventeen-hours goat's-beard was actually ahead of 

 the other flowers in ripening its seed ! 



That shining yellow field, which continues to 

 shine in memory, just now serves to remind me of 

 other plants and flowers that, commonly seen, have 

 no special attraction, but which occasionally find 

 their day of fullest perfection and triimiph on some 

 abandoned and waste ground — a field perhaps once, 

 long years ago, under cultivation. 



I have described some cases of this kind in 

 Nature in Downland, where the turf was ruined for 

 ever by the plough on the high South Downs a 

 century ago, then left for Nature to work her will on 

 the desolated spot. But we are most familiar with 

 the sight of her beautifying processes in the remains 

 of mediaeval buildings scattered about the land, in 

 old castles and abbeys and towers, draped with ivy, 

 the rough stone walls flushed with green and grey and 

 yellow colours of moss and lichen and rainbow- 

 tinted algae, decorated too with yellow wallflower, 

 ivy - leafed toad - flax, and red valerian. Thus 

 Nature glorifies our " builders of ruins." 



And going back to remoter ages, 1 have in my 

 rambles come upon two wonderfully beautiful 

 flower effects, one in a Roman road, unused probably 

 since Roman times ; the other more ancient still 

 on a British earthwork. I found the first one 



