48 WOOD AND GAEDEN 



inclies high ; the throat is beautifully marked mth 

 flames of rich bay on a yellow ground, and the hand- 

 some group of golden-anthered stamens and silvery 

 pistil make up a flower of singular beauty and refine- 

 ment. That valuable Indian Primrose, P. denticulata, 

 is another fine plant for the cool edge or shady hollows 

 of woodlafid in rather good, deep soil. 



But the glory of the copse just now consists in the 

 great stretches of Daffodils. Through the wood run 

 shallow, parallel hollows, the lowest .part of each de- 

 pression some nine paces apart. Local tradition says 

 they are the remains of old pack-horse roads; they 

 occur frequently in the forest-like heathery uplands 

 of our poor-soiled, sandy land, running, for the most 

 part, three or four together, almost evenly side by side. 

 The old people account for this by saying that when 

 one track became too much worn another was taken 

 by its side. Where these pass through the birch 

 copse the Daffodils have been planted in the shallow 

 hollows of the old ways, in spaces of some three yards 

 broad by thirty or forty yards long — one kind at a 

 time. Two of such tracks, planted with Narcissus 

 princeps and iV. HorsfMdi, are now waving rivers of 

 bloom, in many lights and accidents of cloud and sun- 

 shine full of pictorial effect. The planting of Daffodils 

 in this part of the copse is much better than in any 

 other portions where there were no guiding track-ways, 

 and where they were planted in haphazard sprinklings. 



The Grape Hyacinths are now in full bloom, It 



