90 
HEDGE PARSLEY. 
L along the hedge bank which borders the foot-path 
through the Home Field a luxuriant growth of tall 
plants, with fern-like leaves and spreading clusters 
of tiny white flowers, has hidden many of the humbler 
wild flowers that bloomed there early in the spring. The bank 
has been smoothed into shape since last year, and the black- 
thorns and hawthorns of the hedge were at the same time 
trimmed to a uniform height and thickness ; but now there are 
no signs of the hedger’s work, and the shining leaves of the 
black bryony and the twining stems of the bindweeds are wound 
around the young twigs of the thorns. Birds have built their 
nests iipon the bank, carefully concealing them amid the long 
grass and leaves of the wild flowers — a few months ago there 
was not enough vegetation there to hide a field mouse. There 
is no such thing, however, as getting rid of the hedge parsleys, 
and as early in the year as the beginning of February, when 
the woody stems of the honeysuckle were sending out their 
first downy leaves, the fresh green of the wild beaked parsley 
had covered the bank. Now it is in full bloom, and each of 
its thousands of tall stems is topped with flower clusters. Most 
of the stems are nearly a yard high ; some are even taller, and 
the breeze that blows across the Home Field makes them lean 
against the hedge and brushes off their petals against the briars. 
Very beautiful are the leaves of this hedge parsley, only they 
are so abundant and familiar everywhere that few people pause 
to look at them. Each leaf is made up of smooth and shining 
leaflets, the upper surface of which is of a rather darker green 
than the under side, and every umbel or head of flowers is a 
bunch of wild flowers in itself. The butterflies are fond of 
resting on the parsley flowers, and the ladybird, looking like 
a little, living, red jewel, climbs slowly up the hollow stems. 
Sometimes, on still days, a spider will spin its web between 
two of the stems, only to find, as soon as a breeze comes, that 
its labour has been in vain. 
About the same time that the wild beaked parsley flowers, 
a somewhat smaller umbelliferous plant blooms on several 
sunny banks not far from the Home Field. This is the burr 
chervil, and its finely-cut, bright green leaves, like a lacework 
of the fairies, preserve their freshness all through the spring, 
and until they are smothered by the dust of summer. Before 
the elms had burst into bloom in February, the burr chervil 
was doing its best to hide the unsightly bareness of the banks, 
and now its small-flowered umbels are being succeeded by 
little bristly fruits. Botanists are very glad of the difference 
which exists between the fruits of the many kinds of hedge 
parsley, for if some of them were not smooth and others bristly, 
