A VILLAGE IN HAMPSHIRE 169 



reddish spikes of sorrel, scabious — and many others, 

 a catalogue as endless as that of the Catholic saints. 



The fields, too, have their pennies out of the pocket 

 of millionaire nature. Purple loosestrife with pennons 

 that look like foxglove at a distance is very abundant 

 in damp places, dominating the meadow-sweet, the 

 flesh-coloured flowers of gipsy-wort and the glossy leaves, 

 handsome, single, yellow flowers and graceful, weeping 

 stems of herb twopence or penny-wort, its humbler 

 cousin, and like the creeping jenny of gardens. On 

 the edges both of grass and cornfields the roseate rest- 

 harrow makes quite a bushy undergrowth, and beside 

 it stands the bold burdock with its wavy leaves, hooked 

 scales and decorative purple heads, while the pimpernel 

 in the thinner patches of the com is so plentiful as to 

 stain the ground with a reddish dye, the masses of 

 crimson and lilac majoram running yet other hues into 

 the quilt. In an upland pasture, strewn with the 

 purplish-green leaves and pink flowers of red bartsia, 

 I found two toadflaxes flowering side by side, the 

 commoner yellow with straight spurs in the hedge and 

 the round-leaved (whose spurs are curled) with single 

 flowers growing out of each axil. And not less beautiful, 

 if coarser in effect, are the vivid, scattered flares of the 

 ragwort, dimming the pale, gold buttons of the aromatic 

 tansy at its elbow. 



But the finer flowers grow on the chalk slopes among 

 the thyme and eyebright, splashed with the purest of 

 yellows. Here the little milkwort, azure, but some- 

 times pink and sometimes white, and looking double- 

 flowered owing to the long petal-like sepals being 

 coloured like the flower, is quite common, as is vipers 

 bugloss over small areas with its cobalt hues, varied 

 here and there with flowers of a bright rose. The three 

 gentians grew in company here like the Three Graces, 

 gentianella at the end of an attenuated stalk a few 

 inches high, the field gentian and the autumnal gentian, 

 whose flower is of a lighter purple. Among his helle- 

 bores, ladies' tresses, etc., which Gilbert White men- 

 tions as growing upon Selbome Common (some of which 

 extend their range to these slopes), is the curious per- 



