236 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



aspect; its pine-needles-like fine foliage give it a 

 somewhat feathery appearance; it is brighter green 

 than the furze; the topmost slender sprays, gracefully 

 curved at their tips, are tinged with red; and where 

 the foliage is thick there is a bluish tint on the green 

 that is like a bloom. In some lights, especially in the 

 early mornings, when the level sunbeams strike on the 

 bushes, wet with dew or melting hoar-frost, this blue- 

 ness gives the plant a rare, delicate, changeful beauty. 

 Even here on the downs, where most of the junipers 

 one finds are a poor scrub, I have been enchanted at the 

 effects produced by the light on it, but the loveliest 

 effect was in part fortuitous, and came as a delightful 

 surprise. 



The south-west gales of October and November 

 had blown the fallen leaves of a beech-wood for miles 

 over the downs, and at one spot where an area of 

 thirty or forty acres was thickly sprinkled over with 

 a juniper scrub, a drift of yellow and red leaves had 

 formed at the foot of every bush. Here, on the light 

 green smooth turf, the little bushes or tufts, three or 

 four feet apart, showing a blue bloom and play of 

 rainbow colour in their feathery green foliage, each 

 with its drift of intense russet-gold at its foot, made 

 a very singular and very beautiful picture. 



Where the juniper is abundant and grows large, 

 the plants are curiously unlike, and, viewed at a dis- 

 tance of a couple of hundred yards or so, they have 

 something of the appearance of a grove or wood of 



