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38 THE WILD GARDEN, 
shorn hedges that seam the land, often draping them with 
such inimitable grace that half the conservatories in the 
country, with their collections of small red pots and small 
mean plants are stiff and poor compared with a few yards’ 
length of their blossomy verdure. The Wild Roses, Purple 
Vetch, Honeysuckle, and the Virgin’s Bower, clamber above 
smaller, but not less pretty, wildlings, and throw a veil of 
graceful life over the mutilated shrubs, reminding us of the 
plant-life in the nest-like thickets of dwarf shrubs that one 
often meets on the high Alpine meadows. In these islets of 
bushes in a sea of grass one may gather flowers after they 
have been all browsed down on the turf. Next to the most 
interesting aspects of Alpine vegetation, there is perhaps 
nothing in the world of plant-life more lovely than the delicate 
tracery of low-climbing things wedded to the bushes in all 
northern and temperate regions of the earth. Perishing like the 
grass, they are happy and safe in the earth’s bosom in winter; 
in spring they come up as the buds swell, and soon after, 
finding the bushes once more enjoyable, rush over them as 
joyously as children from school over a meadow of cowslips. 
Over bush, over brake, on mountain or lowland copse, holding 
on with delicate but unyielding grasp, they engrave themselves 
on the mind as the central type of grace, In addition to 
climbing Pea-flowers, Convolvuluses, etc., of which the stems 
perish in winter, we have the great tribes of wild vines, noble 
in foliage and often in fruit, the numerous Honeysuckles, 
from coral red to pale yellow, all beautiful; and the Clema- 
tide, rich, varied, and lovely beyond description, from those 
of which each petal reminds one of the wing of some huge 
