WILD PLANT.S WOKTUY OF CULTUKE. 



169 



as a stalking horse, under cover of which they can bamboozle innocent 

 customers. 



Wild Flowers. 



" Woods and groves are of thy dressing, 

 Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. ' — Milton. 



" Take all care of the beautiful," said the old Greeks, because the 

 good and the useful will care for themselves," so we cannot say or do too 

 much in praise of, or in the care and protection of, our most beautiful 

 wild flowers. We scour the forests, jungles and mountains, the pampas 

 and the prairies of the whole world for garden or hot-house plants and 

 Howers, or for vegetable products used in the arts or precious for " the 

 healing of the nations," but we in a great measure neglect and under- 

 ^•alue the wild flowers and the field and forest products of our own land. 

 All the savans, the great travellers male and female, Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, or Miss Marianne North, tell us that no flowers on earth can 

 rival the fresh spring flush, the summer lushness and sweetness, or the 

 rich and ever varying autumn colouration of our native vegetation. 

 Linnieus is said to have dropped on his knees in reverence at the golden 

 gorse or furze as it first flashed on his eyes in England, and I shall never 

 forget the ecstatic delight of a Swiss botanist as he first saw a wood of 

 English blue hyacinths in Sussex, with wild rabbits hopping about amongst 

 them ! Ruskin tells us lie never really felt the full force of what the 

 words " purple and gold " meant to mortal eyes until he saw a field of 

 purple-flowered clover, with a golden river of marsh buttercups running 

 through its midst. The tropics are monotonous in their beauty, and for 

 flowers that really colour and perfume the landscape for miles and miles 

 we must look at home. Go where we may, there is nothing finer than 

 gorse and broom, honeysuckle and hawthorn, followed by brambles, crabs, 

 and wild roses, and the purple heather that paints whole mountain-sides 

 with pure colour, and yields us honey and perfume at the same time. 

 Our woods are sheltered arboreta, and are jewelled with anemone, hyacinth, 

 foxglove, lily of the valley, and a host of other flowers, from the time the 

 catkins of goat-willow and hazel or birch appear, until the brake fern 

 turns brown umber and golden, and the leafy canopy of beech and 

 chestnut and oak take on the livery of the dying year. We all know the 

 flash of pure gold that comes from marsh buttercups in the green water 

 meadows, the pink cuckoo flower or lady smocks "all silver white," 

 oxeyed daisies, clover and fairy-like grasses and sedges of many kinds. 

 Every hedge in England is a summer tangle of traveller's joy, wild roses, 

 and honeysuckle, every river bank and brook side or marsh is enriched 

 with lytlirum and willow herbs, or with golden-flag iris, and ostrich 

 feathery plumes of meadow-sweet. What aquatic gardens there are along 

 the river reaches or on the Norfolk Broads, the reed jungles, or willow- 

 holts fringed with water lilies all afloat, with water buttercups, white and 

 lacy-looking as a bridal veil. Everywhere in wild England to-day the 

 sweet violet, the pale primrose, the sweet woodrutt", and wood wind- 

 flower make copse, wood, and hedgerow alike radiant and fragrant witli 

 vernal beauty. In the daisied meads the cincjue-spottcxl cowslip liangs its 



