Ladyday to Whitsunday 
trails of brown- veined ivy, and the sycamore-trees are nearly 
all green ; the beeches, too, are bursting ; while the old lilac 
is a mass of softest emerald leaves and purpling amethystine 
buds. If you cut a branch just at this stage, and keep it 
in a warm room in warm water, I am told it will bud and 
bloom. I must try this. Some people cannot bear its 
smell, and others call it a vulgar flower because no cottager’s 
garden seems ever without it. But I think it shows 
Hodge’s good taste. The snowberries and dog-roses are 
tipped with green. In Devon, rosehips are sometimes 
called Pig’s Snouts, and here Dog-hips. In Sussex the 
fluffy excrescences sometimes found on the briars and wild 
roses (the nest of a fly, I believe) are called Robin Redbreast’s 
Cushions, and said to be a cure for whooping-cough. It is 
curious that in English, Dutch, German, Spanish, French, 
Latin and Greek the wild rose is called always the Dog- 
rose, probably from the widespread belief that the root 
cured hydrophobia. Thus : English, Dog - rose ; Dutch, 
Hondsroos; Germany, Hundsrose; Spanish, Rosal canina; 
French, Rosier des Chiens ; Latin, Rosa canina ; Greek, 
KvvopoSov' There is a pretty old legend that the Crown 
of Thorns was made of briar rose branches, and wherever 
on the earth fell blood-drops there lay Roses. 
I saw the other day in some paper how an old labourer 
had died from the prick of a dog-rose thorn ; “ cankerbush ” 
it is called in some places, and also by Shakespeare. The 
chestnut leaves are beginning to uncurl their green fingers 
out of their sticky brown gloves. I think it must be the 
lively squirrels who strew the avenue with tufts of leaves 
from the chestnuts and beeches. But why, I wonder ; or 
can if be birds ? There is a legend that once upon a time 
there were no squirrels in all the Borderland, and then 
some Duke of Buccleuch imported a pair from Norway to 
Dalkeith, and thence they spread all over the Merse, 
which accounts, I think, for their looking different to the 
common squirrel as I have seen him in Yorkshire and else- 
where, and having very often lighter-coloured tails. I saw 
one with quite a white tip to his tail the other day, and one 
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