THE MUSIC OF WILD 
 FLOWERS
 
 >
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS
 
 fiV THE SAME A UTHOR 
 
 THE WILD FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 
 LIGHTER STUDIES OF A COUNTRY RECTOR 
 WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL 
 Etc.
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD 
 FLOWERS 
 
 JOHN VAUGHAN, M.A. 
 
 CANON OF WINCHESTER 
 
 "Wild flowers are my music." Dr ARNOLD 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET 
 
 MCMXX
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT has seemed good, in deference to the wishes 
 of many friends, to gather together in book 
 form a number of my botanical papers, contributed to 
 various journals and magazines, which illustrate the 
 interest and delight to be found in the pursuit of 
 botany. 
 
 Many of the articles in this collection appeared 
 originally in the pages of The Outlook and of The 
 Saturday Review, and my grateful thanks are offered 
 to the editors for their kind permission to reproduce 
 them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the 
 editors of The Quarterly Review (in which the first 
 article appeared, and which gives its title to the 
 volume), to The Cornhill, The Spectator and The 
 Treasury. 
 
 I have ventured to include in this collection of 
 botanical papers one on the death-place of Izaak 
 Walton. It appeared in The Cornhill of last Decem- 
 ber, and aroused considerable interest. It will not, 
 I hope, be thought inappropriate, when we call to mind 
 the old fisherman's love of wild flowers. 
 
 JOHN VAUGHAN. 
 THB CLOSE, WINCHESTER, 
 Easter, 1920. 
 
 5
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I. THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS ... 9 
 
 II. AN OLD HERBAL . . . .25 
 
 III. HAMPSHIRE YEWS . . . .36 
 
 IV. THE OLD WALLS OF WINCHESTER . . 48 
 V. COLLEGE WATERMEADS . . . -55 
 
 vi. "HILLS" ..... 61 
 
 VII. ON SELBORNE COMMON . . . .68 
 
 VIII. THE VERGE OF THE FOREST . . -74 
 
 IX. THE NEW FOREST FLORA . . 80 
 
 x. ST ALDHELM'S HEAD . . . .86 
 
 XI. SHINGLE VEGETATION OF THE SUFFOLK SHORE 93 
 
 XII. SUFFOLK SAND-DUNES . . . .99 
 
 XIII. THE SALT MARSHES OF SUFFOLK . .104 
 
 XIV. MINSMERE LEVEL . . . . IIO 
 XV. FLORA OF THE RAILWAY . . Il6 
 
 XVI. LENT LILY WOOD . . . .122 
 
 XVII. FRITILLARIES . . . . .127 
 
 XVIII. THE WOODS IN MAY . . . -133 
 
 XIX. CLIMBING PLANTS . . . .138 
 
 7
 
 8 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XX. WHITE VARIETIES OF BRITISH PLANTS . .144 
 
 XXI. WINTER FOLIAGE . . . .150 
 
 XXII. EARLY SPRING AT VEVEY . . .156 
 
 XXIII. WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 162
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 DR ARNOLD of Rugby used to say : " Wild 
 flowers are my music." He found in wild flowers, 
 not, indeed, in the scientific study of botany, but in 
 the simple love of our wayside flora, that refreshment 
 and recreation which many persons find in music. 
 " I cannot perceive," he wrote to a friend with reference 
 to music, " what to others is a keen source of pleasure ; 
 but, on the other hand, there are many men who cannot 
 enter into the deep delight with which I look at wood- 
 anemones or wood-sorrel." One great charm associ- 
 ated with his beloved home of Fox How, between 
 Rydal and Ambleside, was the abundance of wild 
 flowers. He loved them, he used to say, " as a child 
 loves them." 
 
 To many other distinguished men, besides the great 
 Headmaster of Rugby, have wild flowers been the 
 music of their lives. It is proposed in this chapter to 
 consider a few signal illustrations of this fascinating 
 recreation, which has appealed alike to poets and phil- 
 osophers and men of letters, as well as to individuals 
 of a more scientific attitude of mind. 
 
 Among philosophers who found in wild flowers the 
 solace and refreshment of their lives, two notable names
 
 io THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 may be recalled, those of Jean Jacques Rousseau and 
 of John Stuart Mill. Readers of Rousseau's Confessions 
 will remember the many allusions to the pursuit of 
 botany which beguiled, especially in his later years, so 
 many hours of the unhappy philosopher's life. He 
 often regretted that, as a young man, he had not availed 
 himself of the companionship of one Claude Anet, who, 
 like himself, was an inmate of the household of Madame 
 de Warens, and who, in his herbalising expeditions in 
 the neighbourhood of Chambery, would return home 
 laden with rare and interesting plants. But at that 
 time Rousseau considered botany as only " a fit study 
 for an apothecary." Claude Anet unfortunately died 
 of a pleurisy, caught while botanising in the Alps, and 
 the chance of becoming " an excellent botanist " was 
 lost to the philosopher. But in after years he became, 
 as he tells us, " passionately devoted " to the study of 
 plants, which filled up lys leisure hours, and in pursuit 
 of which he would wander for miles along the country- 
 side, " without a weary moment." During his sojourn 
 in the Isle St Pierre, a lovely spot in the middle of the 
 Lake of Bienne, he seems to have devoted most of his 
 time to his favourite hobby. " The different soils into 
 which the island, although little, was divided, offered," 
 he writes in his Confessions, " a sufficient variety of 
 plants for the study and amusement of my whole 
 life. I was determined not to leave a blade of grass 
 without examination, and I began to take measures 
 for making, with an immense collection of observa- 
 tions, a Flora Petrinsularis." The persecution, how- 
 ever, to which Rousseau was subjected followed him 
 to his beloved retreat, and before long he received 
 notice from the authorities to quit the island without
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS n 
 
 delay. To his intense grief and indignation he was 
 forced to obey, and the projected Flora was never 
 compiled. 
 
 It will doubtless come as a surprise to many persons 
 to learn that the author of Principles of Political 
 Economy was an ardent field botanist. When, as a lad 
 of fifteen, he paid a visit to Sir Samuel Bentham at his 
 house in the south of France, he made friends with his 
 host's only son, George, afterwards the author of the 
 well-known Handbook of the British Flora, and it was 
 under his influence that John Stuart Mill became a 
 " searcher after simples." For many years, after he 
 had entered the India Office, Mill was accustomed to 
 spend his Sundays in long botanical rambles in the 
 neighbourhood of London, while his annual holiday 
 was usually passed in the same pursuit. Surrey and 
 Hampshire were the chief spheres of his researches, and 
 in these counties he made many interesting discoveries, 
 which he was wont to chronicle in the pages of The 
 Phytologist. It is interesting to search the numbers of 
 this botanical miscellany for the contributions of J. S. 
 Mill. He seems to have been the first discoverer in 
 Surrey of the beautiful American balsam, Impatiens 
 fulva, which he found growing sparingly on the banks 
 of the Wey, near Guildford. At Guildford, too, in the 
 great chalk quarries, he found the historic woad, con- 
 cerning which " Caesar saith," in the quaint language of 
 Gerard, " that all the Brittons do colour themselves 
 with woad, which giveth a blew color." Both these 
 plants still flourish abundantly in the localities where 
 Mill found them. The same cannot, unfortunately, be 
 said of the magnificent royal fern, Osmunda regalis, 
 which Mill tells us grew in some swamps near Dorking,
 
 12 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 " so as to form large and tall thickets visible at a great 
 distance," or of the very rare man-orchis, Acer as 
 anthropophom, which he found " growing profusely on 
 Colley and Buckland Hills and between Box Hill and 
 Juniper Hill." When on a visit to the Isle of Wight 
 Mill noticed on the shore of Sandown Bay a single speci- 
 men of the purple spurge, the^ only record of this extra- 
 ordinarily scarce plant in the island. The specimen is 
 still preserved, the most interesting, alike for its rarity 
 and on account of its finder, in the Bromfield collection 
 of island plants. After the death of his wife at Avignon, 
 in 1859, Mill bought a cottage near to the place of 
 her burial, and there he mainly resided during the 
 remainder of his life. He found some consolation in 
 his love of wild flowers and busied himself in gather- 
 ing together materials for a Flora of Avignon. Only 
 three days before his death he walked over fifteen 
 miles in search of some rare species. His herbarium 
 of British plants he bequeathed to the museum at 
 Kew. 
 
 Passing from philosophers to poets, we should not 
 unnaturally expect to find among the latter a larger 
 number of individuals interested in our native flora. 
 Our literature abounds in passages in which the praises 
 of the country-side are sung. And yet, apparently, but 
 few of our poets cared for the pursuit of herbalising. 
 There are many interesting allusions to wild flowers in 
 the plays of Shakespeare and in the poems of Milton, 
 but they are more or less of a literary character. 
 Neither Thomson, who in his Seasons revived the poetry 
 of nature, nor Wordsworth, though he celebrated the 
 daisy and the celandine and the daffodil, nor Cowper, 
 though he recognised the intimate charm of country life,
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 13 
 
 nor Keble, in spite of his stanzas to the snowdrop, can 
 be regarded in any sense as field botanists. There are, 
 however, a few exceptions, among whom may be men- 
 tioned John Clare, the peasant poet of Northampton- 
 shire, Thomas Gray and George Crabbe, Matthew 
 Arnold and Lord Tennyson. 
 
 There is no more pathetic figure in English literature 
 than that of John Clare, of Helpstone, who passed the 
 earlier portion of his life in abject poverty and the latter 
 part in the prison-house of an asylum. But such happi- 
 ness as at times was vouchsafed to him was due entirely 
 to his love of nature, and especially of wild flowers. Of 
 Tennyson's interest in things botanical it is unnecessary 
 to speak. His poems contain numberless passages 
 which illustrate his close acquaintance with our wayside 
 flora. Now it is a " flower in the crannied wall " ; now 
 the " golden hour " of the dark yew, " when flower is 
 feeling after flower " ; now " the faint, sweet cuckoo- 
 flower " or the " blue forget-me-not " ; and now " the 
 fruit which in. our winter woodland looks a flower." 
 What more striking description of an English wood in 
 May, when the bluebells or wild hyacinths are a " para- 
 dise of blossom," than these lines in Guinevere : 
 
 "sheets of hyacinth 
 That seem'd the heavens upbreaking thro' the earth " ! 
 
 Or we call to mind the exquisite spring picture in the 
 In Memoriam : 
 
 " Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
 Now burgeons every maze of quick 
 About the flowering squares, and thick 
 By ashen roots the violets blow " ;
 
 i 4 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 or the following lines which, in the same poem, reveal 
 the poet's longing for the flowers of spring : 
 
 " Dip down upon the northern shore, 
 O sweet new-year delaying long ; 
 Thou dost expectant nature wrong ; 
 Delaying long, delay no more. 
 
 Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, 
 
 The little speedwell's darling blue, 
 
 Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, 
 Laburnums, dropping wells of fire." 
 
 But it is probably unknown to most readers of the 
 famous Elegy in a Country Churchyard that the favourite 
 study of the poet Gray, during the last ten years of 
 his life, was the study of natural history. After the 
 manner of Gilbert White, who, unknown to the poet, 
 was making similar observations at Selborne, Gray kept 
 a calendar in which he noted the opening of flowers and 
 the arrival of birds. Thus on I2th February 1763 
 crocuses and hepatica were blossoming through the 
 snow in the garden of Pembroke College, Cambridge ; 
 on 2ist February the first white butterfly appeared ; 
 on 5th March he heard the thrush sing and a few days 
 later the skylark. In botany he took a special interest. 
 He studied the subject in Hudson's Flora Anglica and 
 in the Sy sterna Nature of Linnaeus. A copy of this 
 latter work, the tenth edition, published in 1758, Gray 
 had interleaved, and this volume, with voluminous 
 notes and beautifully illustrated with pen-and-ink 
 sketches, eventually came into the possession of Mr 
 Ruskin. On Ruskin's death this copy passed to Mrs 
 Arthur Severn, who presented it to Charles Eliot
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 15 
 
 Norton. Mr Norton showed his appreciation of the 
 gift by publishing in America a little volume entitled 
 The Poet Gray as a Naturalist, in which he presents us 
 with a selection of Gray's notes and with facsimiles of 
 some of the pages. The notes, written in a small, clear 
 handwriting, reveal the poet's accuracy and power of 
 observation, while the sketches illustrate the excellence 
 of his drawings, especially of birds and insects. This 
 interleaved copy of Linnaeus remains the chief memorial 
 of Gray's occupation during the last few years of his life. 
 Mr Norton does not tell us what became of the poet's 
 copy of Hudson's Flora, but the interleaved Linnaeus 
 has found a home in Harvard University Library. 
 
 So many are the allusions to wild flowers in Crabbe's 
 poems that readers of The Borough and The Talcs would 
 naturally infer that the poet must have been a botanist. 
 And the conclusion is abundantly confirmed by what 
 we learn from other sources. " From early life to his 
 latest years," his son tells us in an interesting Memoir, 
 " my father cultivated the study of botany with fond 
 zeal, both in books and in the fields." While practising 
 as an apothecary at Aldeburgh, and afterwards as a 
 clergyman in Leicestershire and in Suffolk, George 
 Crabbe found in botany his main recreation. Like his 
 own " village priest " in Tales of the Hall, 
 
 " He knew the plants in mountain, wood, and mead ; 
 
 ... all that lived or moved 
 Were books to him ; he studied them and loved." 
 
 It was his custom to copy into notebooks long passages 
 from rare or expensive works on botany, " of which his 
 situation could only permit him to obtain a temporary 
 loan." Several of these notebooks have been happily
 
 16 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 preserved, and through the kindness and courtesy of 
 Mr John Murray I have had the rare pleasure and privi- 
 lege of examining them. They consist for the most 
 part of extracts, written in a singularly clear and 
 beautiful hand, from botanical transactions, such as 
 those of the Linnaean Society, and from such works as 
 Curtis's Flora Londinensis, together with observations 
 on mosses, fungi and ferns. One notebook contains 
 no less than fifty pages relating to British fungi, copied 
 out, in the same exquisite handwriting, from Withering's 
 Botany ; another notebook deals with the sedges, and 
 also includes long descriptions, taken from Withering, 
 of British seaweeds. Occasionally we meet with re- 
 marks on the medicinal virtues of plants, an aspect of 
 botany which was doubtless of special interest to one 
 who had practised as an apothecary. 
 
 At one time Crabbe contemplated writing an English 
 treatise on botany. Indeed the work was virtually 
 completed, when, in consequence of the criticism of the 
 Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who could 
 not tolerate the idea of " degrading the science of botany 
 by treating it in a modern language," Crabbe flung the 
 manuscript into the fire. The poet often regretted this 
 hasty action in after years, as otherwise he might have 
 had the honour of being the recognised discoverer of 
 more than one species of the British flora. He would 
 specially mention a rare clover, which he found on the 
 seashore at Aldeburgh, and which the distinguished 
 botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, identified as Trifolium 
 suffocatum, a species hitherto unknown in England. 
 This particular specimen is now preserved in the Banks 
 Herbarium in the British Museum. It would take up 
 too much space to attempt to treat the botanical allu-
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 17 
 
 sions to be found in Crabbe's poems. It must be suffi- 
 cient to say that those allusions are most frequent in 
 the poems associated with Aldeburgh. A few summers 
 ago I visited Aldeburgh for the express purpose of com- 
 paring its flora to-day with what it was when Crabbe 
 wrote The Borough. Almost all the poet's plants still 
 remain. The Roman nettle is, however, gone, as is also 
 the sea cotton- weed from the shingle beach between 
 Slaughden Quay and Hollesley Bay. But the rare and 
 interesting sea-pea (Lathy r us maritimus) continues to 
 flourish in abundance near Orford lighthouse and the 
 little sickle-medick in Dunwich churchyard. 
 
 Matthew Arnold doubtless inherited from his father 
 the keen interest in wild flowers, which increased with 
 advancing years. Many of his poems abound in allu- 
 sions to the simple species of the country-side ; but the 
 most noted, which illustrate alike the scenes above 
 Oxford and the wild plants to be found there, are The 
 Scholar Gipsy and Thyrsis. These may be called the 
 two great Oxford poems, and the pleasant country on 
 the Berkshire side of the Thames, within a few miles of 
 Oxford, will always be associated with Arnold's name. 
 There he loved to wander on foot with Thyrsis, or some 
 other congenial friend, through the two Hinkseys, 
 where " nothing keeps the same," along the track by 
 Childsworth Farm, " past the high wood, to where the 
 elm-tree crowns the hill," and where he " knew each 
 field, each flower, each stick." As Tennyson liked to 
 think of his lost companion as at least laid in English 
 earth, beneath the clover sod, that takes the sunshine 
 and the rain, 
 
 " And from his ashes may be made 
 The violet of his native land " ;
 
 i8 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 so with Matthew Arnold and the Scholar Gipsy. ' ' Thou 
 from the earth art gone long since," he cries, 
 
 "and in some quiet churchyard laid 
 Some country nook, where o'er thy unknown grave 
 Tall grasses and white-flowering nettles wave, 
 Under a dark, red-fruited yew-tree's shade." 
 
 How " he loved each simple joy the country yields," 
 especially the " store of flowers " " the frail-leaf' d, 
 white anemone," " dark bluebells drenched with dews," 
 the " purple orchises with spotted leaves," the " Cumnor 
 cowslips," the " red loosestrife and blond meadow- 
 sweet " ! And the " wide fields of breezy grass " above 
 Godstow Bridge appealed to him, and " the wood which 
 hides the daffodil," and the swamps where in May the 
 fritillary blossomed ! "I know," he cried, 
 
 " I know what white, what purple fritillaries 
 The grassy harvest of the river-fields 
 Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, 
 And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries." 
 
 Above all, perhaps, he loved the " lone, sky-pointing 
 tree," " that lonely tree against the western sky." 
 
 Charles Kingsley was a poet as well as a parson and a 
 novelist. He was also deeply intefested in science, and 
 once said that he would rather occupy a comparatively 
 lowly place in the roll of science than a higher one in 
 that of literature. To his love of natural history his 
 lectures on geology delivered at Chester, his papers on 
 the " wonders of the seashore " in Glaucus, and on the 
 " charm of birds " in Prose Idylls, bear abundant 
 evidence. But with him, as with Matthew Arnold, 
 botany was the favourite recreation. As a schoolboy 
 at Helston, in Cornwall, under the influence and in-
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 19 
 
 spiration of the Rev. C. A. Johns, the author of the well- 
 known Flowers of the Field, Kingsley's taste, or rather 
 passion, for botany was encouraged and developed, 
 and ever afterwards, in his parish of Eversley, at 
 Chester, where he was a canon, in his frequent holidays 
 in Devonshire, the study of wild flowers was an absorb- 
 ing recreation. How he delighted in the flora of the 
 moorland which constituted so large a portion of his 
 parish ! How could his life, he asks in his Winter 
 Garden, be monotonous when there were so many 
 wonders awaiting explanation? What, for instance, 
 " makes Erica Tetralixgrow in one soil, and the bracken 
 in another ? How did three species of club-moss one 
 of them quite an Alpine one get down here, all the way 
 from Wales perhaps, upon this isolated patch of grass ? 
 Why did the little mousetail, Myosurus minimus, 
 which I had hunted for in vain for fourteen years, 
 appear by dozens in the fifteenth, upon a new-made 
 bank, which had been for at least two hundred years a 
 farmyard gateway " ? 
 
 Such botanical puzzles were to him a source of 
 constant interest and pleasure. At Chester he estab- 
 lished a botanical class, with a weekly ramble in search 
 of wild flowers. At first, we are told, the class was 
 watched from the city walls with some surprise and 
 amusement, but before long the gathering became so 
 large that a man who met them supposed them to be a 
 congregation going to the opening of a Dissenting chapel 
 in the country. When at length the desire of his life 
 was gratified, and in company with his daughter he 
 visited the tropics, readers of At Last will remember 
 how he gloried in the amazing vegetation. And later, 
 when he paid a visit to America, how the Californian
 
 20 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 flora appealed to him ! " Flowers," he wrote home, 
 " most lovely and wonderful. We are making a 
 splendid collection. Rose and the local botanist got 
 more than fifty new sorts one morning." Not many 
 months after his return Kingsley lay dying of pneu- 
 monia in Eversley Rectory. He was kept constantly, 
 we are told, under the influence of opiates to quiet the 
 cough and keep off haemorrhage, but his dreams were 
 always of his travels in the West Indies and the Rocky 
 Mountains and of the beautiful things that he had there 
 seen. 
 
 Among scholars of textual criticism no name stands 
 higher than that of Professor Hort, who, in conjunction 
 with Dr Westcott, brought out the famous edition of 
 the Greek Testament. He may be taken as an illustra- 
 tion of that love of botany which not infrequently has 
 been associated with the highest scholarship. As a boy 
 at Rugby, perhaps owing to the influence of Dr Arnold, 
 he became much interested in wild flowers, and his 
 school diary contains a number of entries as to the 
 finding of uncommon plants. At Cambridge he was 
 fortunate in winning the friendship of Professor C. C. 
 Babington, with whom he would go for long botanical 
 walks, and under whose guidance he worked diligently 
 at the brambles and other difficult genera. After taking 
 a First Class in the Classical Tripos of 1850, he entered 
 the following year for the Natural Sciences Tripos, when 
 he again won a First Class, with " distinction in 
 botany." It was mostly his custom in after years to 
 spend his holidays in Switzerland, and the tours were 
 always arranged with reference to his favourite pursuit. 
 In time, as the result of repeated Alpine expeditions, 
 he collected a fine herbarium of Swiss plants, while his
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 21 
 
 botanical contributions to Mr John Ball's Alpine Guides 
 were recognised as of the utmost value. Many of his 
 excursions were taken in company with Mr Ball, of 
 which there are fascinating descriptions in several of 
 his published letters. 
 
 On one occasion, to his intense delight, Hort found 
 near Cogne the very rare Astragalus alopecur aides, a 
 plant which had not been recorded in that district for 
 over half-a-century, and " which alone was worth com- 
 ing to Cogne for." One summer he stayed a fortnight 
 on the top of the Stelvio Pass, and, when a friend ex- 
 pressed surprise that he and his wife could linger for 
 so long in such an unattractive place, he replied with 
 perfect simplicity : " Oh, but we have found fourteen 
 new plants." During his last visit to Switzerland, 
 undertaken in the hope that it might possibly restore 
 his broken health, the Alpine flora was a constant solace 
 and delight to him. He managed to travel as far as 
 Saas-Fee, a favourite haunt of his, and, though too 
 weak to walk far from his hotel, he found a joy and 
 interest in " the daily bouquet of Alpine flowers " which 
 was brought to him. In the last letter which he wrote 
 to his youngest daughter from Saas-Fee he dwelt with 
 admiration on the rare white Geranium aconitifolium, 
 and " the exquisite blue Alpine columbine, with flowers 
 not so large as I have sometimes seen it, but large 
 enough to satisfy any reasonable person." 
 
 As another illustration of an interest in wild flowers 
 among distinguished scholars the name of Professor 
 Cowell may be recalled. He was Professor of Sanskrit 
 in the University of Cambridge and the lifelong friend 
 of Edward FitzGerald, to whom he introduced Omar 
 Khayyam. When Cowell was Principal of the San-
 
 22 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 skrit College at Calcutta he read with much interest 
 a book by Professor Balfour, of Edinburgh, entitled 
 Botany and Religion, and he resolved, should he ever 
 return to England, to enter on the study of botany. 
 Some years later the opportunity presented itself. 
 Cowell found himself at Cambridge as the first Professor 
 of Sanskrit, and Fellow of Corpus. His health was in- 
 different and he was advised to take more regular 
 exercise. His friends urged him to begin the study of 
 wild flowers, and Professor Babington offered himself 
 as a companion in botanical rambles. Cowell, mindful 
 of his Indian resolution, eagerly adopted the suggestion 
 and set himself to master the elements of the science. 
 Exercise now became a delight to him. Indeed, so 
 successful was the new pursuit that the walks, we are 
 told, were not confined to Cambridge, but expeditions 
 were made to neighbouring counties, and holidays were 
 thenceforward made invigorating and really refreshing 
 in the ardent search for rare plants. In subsequent 
 years Cowell succeeded in collecting a nearly complete 
 flora of the county of Cambridge. 
 
 His letters reveal how keen was his interest in herbal- 
 ising and how diligently he informed himself of the 
 habitats of rare species. Now he is searching for Colon- 
 easier on the Great Orme's Head, its only locality in 
 Great Britain. Now he is at Ventnor, in the Isle of 
 Wight, seeking, but unsuccessfully, for the scarce and 
 curious mousetail. Again he is delighted at finding, 
 near Shelford, a fine patch of the marsh-helleborine. A 
 copy of John Ray's Flora of Cambridgeshire, published 
 in 1660, the first county flora ever produced, which he 
 picked up on a second-hand bookstall, fills him with 
 enthusiasm, and he is charmed when he discovers at
 
 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 23 
 
 Chesterton a quantity of the beautiful little moschatel 
 growing on the very spot where Ray recorded it in the 
 seventeenth century. When an old man, several years 
 past seventy, he insisted, one hot July day, on walking 
 many miles to see if a rare geranium still maintained its 
 old position near the Redcross turnpike. 
 
 That men of science should be interested in botany 
 is more in accordance with the natural order of things. 
 Indeed in former times herbalism and medicine were 
 intimately associated together, and many of our early 
 botanists were physicians. Dr Turner, " the father of 
 English botany," was a physician before he became a 
 divine and Dean of Wells. So with most of the Con- 
 tinental herbalists of the sixteenth century. Leonard 
 Fuchs, the author of the most splendid herbal ever 
 published, was a physician ; so was Dodoens, the Dutch 
 herbalist ; and L'Obel, who was physician to William 
 the Silent ; and Mattioli, the great Italian botanist ; 
 and the two eminent brothers, Jean and Gaspard 
 Bauhin. In modern times the association no longer 
 exists, but a notable illustration of a celebrated surgeon 
 and man of science who found in wild flowers his 
 recreation is seen in the life of Lord Lister, one of the 
 greatest benefactors of mankind. During his career 
 as a medical student Lister made the acquaintance of 
 Professor Lindley, the distinguished botanist, and the 
 friendship left a lasting influence on his life. Lister 
 learnt from him the love of wild flowers which gave him 
 so keen a pleasure in after years. During his holidays 
 in Switzerland and at home he collected and carefully 
 preserved the choicer species he met with, and his 
 herbarium of Alpine plants became eventually a large 
 and valuable one. It was not as a scientific botanist
 
 24 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 that he pursued his hobby, but as a simple lover of the 
 beauty and interest of wild flowers. He found no dis- 
 traction from the hours of hospital duties more gentle 
 and effective, we are told, than that which the bright 
 blossoms of the country-side afforded him. 
 
 Such are some of those who among our famous men 
 of science and literature have found in wild flowers a 
 recreation and a delight. The list might, of course, be 
 considerably extended. But sufficient has been said to 
 substantiate the statement with which we started, that 
 others beside Dr Arnold have found in wild flowers the 
 music of their lives.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AN OLD HERBAL 
 
 ONE morning, a few years since, I was working in 
 the botanical department of the British Museum 
 of Natural History at South Kensington when the 
 Keeper of Botany came to where I was sitting and 
 whispered that when I was disengaged he had an old 
 book to show me. Crossing over into one of the window 
 recesses, he produced a folio copy of the first edition of 
 Fuchs' History of Plants, published at Basle in the year 
 1542. It was, he said, the most magnificent herbal 
 ever published, and placing it on a desk he proceeded 
 to show me the exquisite woodcuts. I had never seen 
 the work before and was naturally delighted with its 
 beauty and interest. Mr Britten suggested that I 
 should write an article on the Herbal, to which, he said, 
 adequate justice had never been done. 
 
 It was difficult, however, to write an appreciation of a 
 folio volume of 900 pages, enriched with over 500 full- 
 page illustrations, without some further opportunity 
 for careful study, and at the time such opportunity did 
 not present itself. The book is a very scarce one and 
 probably but few copies are to be found in England, 
 and the suggestion, therefore, of the Keeper of Botany 
 for the time fell to the ground. 
 
 It came to pass, however, that some years later I was 
 appointed to a residentiary canonry at Winchester, and 
 
 25
 
 26 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 spending one winter's afternoon in the dark recesses of 
 the Cathedral library, which contains little beyond 
 ponderous works of theology, I discovered, to my 
 amazement and delight, a copy of the same herbal 
 which had excited my admiration in the British Museum 
 some years before. How it came to be in such strange 
 and solemn company there was nothing to show. But 
 there it was, resting against an obsolete tome of 
 seventeenth-century theology Fuchs' botanical mas- 
 terpiece, De Historia Stirpium, the first edition, in folio, 
 written in Latin arid containing the same magnificent 
 illustrations. The recollection of Mr James Britten's 
 suggestion at once came back to me, and lifting 
 up the heavy volume, bound in the original oak 
 boards, I carried it across the close to my prebendal 
 quarters. 
 
 No wonder that Mr Britten praised it. The work is, 
 beyond question, the most splendid, by reason of its 
 superb and original woodcuts, of the many herbals 
 which appeared in Germany, in England, in Switzer- 
 land, in Italy, in the Low Countries, during the revival 
 of learning in the sixteenth century. 
 
 Leonhard Fuchs was born at Membdingen, in 
 Bavaria, in the year 1501, and at the early age of 
 thirteen is said to have graduated as B.A. at the Uni- 
 versity of Erfurt. He afterwards studied at Ingolstadt, 
 where he took a doctor's degree, and eventually became 
 Professor of Medicine in the University. At Ingolstadt 
 he fell under the influence of Luther's writings and be- 
 came, like so many of the Renaissance botanists, a stout 
 Protestant. During a terrible epidemic which swept 
 over Germany in 1529 he became widely known for his 
 successful treatment of the disease, and it is interesting
 
 AN OLD HERBAL 27 
 
 to remember that this fame even extended to our shores, 
 for later on there was published in London a little work 
 of instructions against the plague, entitled " A worthy 
 practise of the moste learned Phisition Maister Leonerd 
 Fuchsius, Doctor in Phisicke, most necessary in this 
 needfull tyme of our visitation, for the comforte of all 
 good and faythfull people, both olde and yonge, both 
 for the sicke and for them that woulde avoyde the 
 daunger of contagion." In the year 1535 he was 
 appointed to a professorship at the University of 
 Tubingen, which had just adopted the Reformed Faith, 
 and there he remained until his death in 1566. In spite 
 of his untiring activity, alike as a professor and as a 
 physician, he yet found time for botanical studies, and 
 in 1542 his great Latin Herbal appeared from the well- 
 known printing-press of Michael Isingrin of Basle. It 
 was followed in the succeeding year by a German 
 edition, also in folio, and with the same woodcuts, over 
 500 in number, of which about 400 are illustrations of 
 indigenous German plants and 100 of foreign species. 
 Shortly afterwards, in 1545, Isingrin printed an octavo 
 edition of the Herbal with the same illustrations on a 
 reduced scale. It is interesting to call to mind that, in 
 honour of our botanist, the name of Fuchsia has been 
 given to one of the handsomest of garden flowers. 
 
 No doubt it is the beauty of the illustrations that has 
 rendered Fuchs' Herbal so justly famous. Indeed 
 their superlative merit is generally recognised. " Fuchs' 
 splendid figures," says Professor Von Sachs, " remain 
 unsurpassed." " They represent," writes Mrs Agnes 
 Arber, in her fascinating book on Herbals, "the high- 
 water mark of that type of botanical drawing which 
 seeks to express the individual character and habit of
 
 28 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 each species." While not remarkable for their minute 
 scientific accuracy, such as we should expect to find in 
 modern drawings though even in this respect they 
 often reach a high botanical level " they probably sur- 
 pass in artistic quality," says Mr Miall, " any long series 
 of botanical figures that has ever been published." It 
 is this artistic quality that renders the figures so attrac- 
 tive. Even such a prosaic species as the wild cabbage 
 is seen to possess an intrinsic beauty. Sometimes, as 
 in the case of the hop, the bryony and the wild pea, the 
 figures are arranged in a highly decorative manner so as 
 to cover the entire folio sheet. Other woodcuts, such 
 as those of the herb-paris, the two hellebores, the wild 
 peony, the cyperus or galingale, the wild garlic and the 
 yellow horned-poppy, are of quite extraordinary beauty. 
 It is interesting, too, to know, not only the names, but 
 the appearance of the artists who produced such excel- 
 lent work. Very rarely is such information vouchsafed 
 in works of this kind, but Leonhard Fuchs was clearly 
 not unmindful of the assistance he had received from 
 those who produced the illustrations. In addition to a 
 fine full-paged portrait of the author, represented as 
 holding a spray of veronica in his hand, which forms the 
 frontispiece, there will be found at the end of the volume 
 the named portraits of his three assistants viz. the 
 two draughtsmen, Heinricus Fullmauret and Albertus 
 Mayer who are seen copying a plant from nature, and 
 the engraver, Vitus Rudolphus Specklin or Speckle, 
 who cut the wood-blocks. In the preface to his Herbal, 
 Fuchs thus generously acknowledges their labours : 
 " Vitus Rudolphus Specklin, by far the best engraver of 
 Strasburg, has admirably copied the wonderful in- 
 dustry of the draughtsmen, and has with such excellent
 
 AN OLD HERBAL 29 
 
 craft expressed in his engraving the features of each 
 drawing that he seems to have contended with the 
 draughtsmen for glory and victory." 
 
 The drawings are in outline only, with little or no 
 shading, the work of colouring being left, as was mostly 
 the case in similar works of this period, to the owner of 
 the volume. The beauty of the woodcuts was at once 
 recognised, and succeeding publishers were not slow to 
 make use of them. Indeed, the illustrations of the 
 octavo edition were freely pirated, and became familiar 
 in England through their reproduction in the Herball 
 of Dr Turner, Dean of Wells, " the Father of English 
 Botany," and also in Lyte's Niewe Herball, published a 
 few years later. 
 
 But while the main glory of Fuchs' Herbal is to be 
 ~iound in the engravings, the letterpress shows a distinct 
 advance on previous botanical writings The descrip- 
 tions of plants, especially in the German edition, are 
 for the period remarkably good, and moreover, the Latin 
 edition possesses a glossary of technical terms which is 
 the first of its kind known in botanical literature. 
 Many of these explanations are of distinct interest, as 
 when he compares an umbel to the parasol or umbrella 
 which ladies are wont to carry to keep off the heat and 
 glare of the sun. The arrangement of species in the 
 Herbal is alphabetical, according to the Greek names of 
 the genera, and sometimes, after the manner of the age, 
 plants are associated which have no scientific relation- 
 ship. Thus the violet and the dame's violet are placed 
 together, and the grass of Parnassus is reckoned among 
 the grasses. The original edition opens with a most 
 interesting Latin preface, from which it is abundantly 
 clear that with Leonhard Fuchs the pursuit of botany
 
 30 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 was one of intense personal pleasure. Unfortunately 
 the preface is wanting in our Cathedral copy of the 
 Herbal, but I may venture to quote the following pass- 
 age from Mrs Arber's excellent translation : 
 
 " But there is no reason why I should dilate at greater 
 length upon the pleasantness and delight of acquiring 
 knowledge of plants, since there is no one who does not 
 know that there is nothing in this life pleasanter and 
 more delightful than to wander over woods, mountains, 
 plains, garlanded and adorned with flowerets and plants 
 of various sorts, and most elegant to boot, and to gaze 
 intently upon them. But it increases that pleasure and 
 delight not a little if there be added an acquaintance 
 with the virtues and powers of those same plants." 
 
 In turning to our Cathedral copy of Fuchs' Herbal, 
 which possesses the original oak boards, it is interesting 
 to find that, as was so frequently the case with the early 
 printers, some vellum leaves of a Latin] manuscript 
 have been employed in binding, both at the beginning 
 and end of the volume. It is also noticeable that our 
 woodcuts have been coloured in the most accurate and 
 artistic manner. So excellently has the work been done 
 that it is hardly possible to believe that the illustrations 
 are hand-painted. And the colouring is as scientifi- 
 cally correct as the general appearance is artistic. It is 
 clearly the work of one who had no mean botanical 
 knowledge. The whole of the 500 folio engravings of 
 plants are painted, and so are the portraits of Fuchs 
 and his assistants, and the printer's mark at the end of 
 the volume, consisting of the well-known holly-tree, 
 with a slab and the words Palma. Ising. But what 
 gives our Cathedral copy a special and peculiar interest
 
 AN OLD HERBAL 31 
 
 is the fact that shortly after its publication in 1542 it 
 must have come into the possession of an English 
 botanist, who proceeded to write beneath the folio 
 engraving of each species the English equivalent of the 
 Latin and German names. The handwriting almost 
 certainly belongs to the sixteenth century, and was the 
 work of a skilled scribe. It possesses considerable dis- 
 tinction of style, and was written either with a reed-pen 
 or with a broad-nibbed quill. From these English 
 synonyms we get at first hand a knowledge of the 
 popular names of many British plants in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth. It is interesting to find that, in a 
 large number of instances, the names remain unchanged. 
 At first sight they may appear strange to us, in their 
 singular " court-hand " dress and sixteenth-century 
 orthography, but we soon recognise some well-known 
 friends. Thus, to mention but a few instances, we meet 
 with bryorye (bryony), mugewort (mugwort), mader 
 (madder), borage, maretayll (mare's tail), betonye, 
 penye wort (pennywort), mother worte (motherwort), 
 sanicle, great and little cellandyne (celandine), gots 
 berde (goafs-beard), hensbayne or cowebayne (hen- 
 bane), fewmetrye (fumitory), eivye (ivy), spurge, 
 houndstonge, wodebynde (woodbine) and many other 
 familiar names. 
 
 But perhaps a deeper interest is attached to those 
 sixteenth-century names of British plants which have 
 now become obsolete among us. The yellow flag, so 
 common on the banks of our streams and ditches, is 
 called the " gladyon," and its first cousin, the blue iris, 
 " the blewe flore de lyis." The great hellebore, which 
 still flourishes at Selborne, is known, as it was to Gilbert 
 White, as " the berefot " (bear's foot). Colymbine is
 
 32 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 " columbells," and the lily of the valley is " the great 
 parke lyllye." The very rare blue pimpernel is called 
 the " faemayll pympernell " (Female Pimpernel) to dis- 
 tinguish it from the common red species. I once found 
 this lovely little plant beneath a pear-tree in John Ray's 
 old garden at Black Notley in Essex, and I notice that 
 he calls it " the blew-flower'd or Female Pimpernel " in 
 his classical Synopsis of British plants. It is strange 
 to find beneath a beautiful woodcut of the snowdrop 
 the words " the wyld whit violet." The choice, sweet- 
 scented Daphne mezereum is named the " wyld laurell," 
 and the butcher's-broom the " reed laurell." Very 
 few species of British ferns are mentioned by Fuchs, but 
 there are fine engravings of the adder's-tongue and the 
 moonwort ; and it is interesting to notice that our un- 
 known English botanist calls the one " serpent-tonge " 
 (serpent 's-tongue), and the other " lunary the less." 
 The cowslip he calls a " pagle," a name by which the 
 plant is still known in the eastern counties. The purple 
 colchicum or meadow-saffron he names " the wyld 
 purple lillye " ; and the rare martagon lily, a fine clump 
 of which I found in a Hampshire wood last summer, is 
 " the purple daffodyll." The different species of orchis 
 were hardly discriminated in the sixteenth century, and 
 many strange names were in popular use. Indeed, as 
 one old herbalist says, the order " has almost as many 
 several names attributed to the several sorts of it as 
 would fill a sheet of paper, too tedious to reherse." It 
 is interesting to notice that our botanist calls them 
 " fox cods," a name rarely met with in English herbals. 
 He thus distinguishes " great fox cods," " small fox 
 cods," " great foemayll (female) fox cods," " triple fox 
 cods," both " mayll " and " foemayll."
 
 AN OLD HERBAL 33 
 
 It would lend an additional interest to our Cathedral 
 copy of Fuchs' Herbal if we could trace its " pedigree." 
 That it is a first edition of the magnificent De Historia 
 Stirpium, printed by Isingrin of Basle, and published in 
 the year 1542, is of course certain ; and that it found 
 its way over to England shortly after its publication 
 seems also clear. But who coloured the woodcuts ? 
 Who wrote the English names on the fine folio pages 
 beneath the illustrations ? Whose liberality bequeathed 
 the precious volume to the Cathedral library ? On 
 these points no certain answer can be given. If, how- 
 ever, the English names were added at Winchester, I 
 should be bold enough to venture a suggestion. That 
 the writing is by a sixteenth-century hand I feel pretty 
 certain, and that the species were named by a com- 
 petent botanist is beyond question. He was a man, 
 too, of culture and learning, as the style of writing con- 
 clusively shows, and moreover a person of means, for 
 the volume was no inexpensive one. Was there any- 
 one, in the second half of the sixteenth century, con- 
 nected with Winchester, above all with the Cathedral, 
 whose tastes and scientific attainments would lead him 
 to possess a copy of the great German botanist's 
 splendid work ? I think I have discovered such an in- 
 dividual. On I5th March 1549, one J onn Warner, M.D., 
 was installed a Prebendary of the Cathedral. Dr 
 Warner was Warden of All Souls, Oxford, and had 
 been appointed by Henry VIII. the first Regius Pro- 
 fessor of Medicine in the University. Like almost all 
 scientific men of the time, he was a sturdy Protestant, 
 and during Queen Mary's reign was suspended from the 
 wardenship of All Souls. On the accession of Queen 
 Elizabeth, the Deanery of Winchester falling vacant
 
 34 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 through the resignation of Dr Steward, who had been 
 appointed by Queen Mary, and who doubtless shared 
 her religious convictions, Prebendary Warner was at 
 once nominated to the position. He was installed on 
 i5th October 1559, and remained Dean of Winchester 
 until his death in 1564. As Prebendary and as Dean 
 Dr Warner was thus associated with the Cathedral for 
 fifteen years. As a Doctor of Medicine, in an age 
 when herbalism was intimately connected with the art 
 of healing, we should expect him to be interested in 
 botany. And that he was so interested is shown 
 beyond all manner of doubt by the discovery in the 
 Cathedral library of a botanical work bearing his 
 signature. It is a folio copy of De Natura Stirpium by 
 Joannes Ruellius, a French physician, and published 
 by Froben at Basle in 1537. The volume, which is 
 without illustrations and was mainly intended to 
 elucidate the writings of the ancient botanists, is in the 
 original leather binding, with remains of the iron clasps 
 and with the iron rivet for a chain. It is also to be 
 noticed that the famous printer Froben has utilised a 
 Latin manuscript, as in the case of our Fuchs' Herbal, 
 in the process of binding the volume. I wondered how 
 this botanical treatise came to be in a theological 
 library, and it was with a thrill of delight that I at 
 length discovered the following inscription on one of 
 the pages : "Ex dono Do. Jo. Warneri nuper decani 
 Wynton." I have also discovered a similar entry in a 
 folio copy of Dioscorides' De Medica Mater ia, published 
 at Cologne in 1529 : " Liber Joanis Warneri." But for 
 the Dean's name in Fuchs' Herbal I have searched the 
 nine hundred pages in vain. Too much, however, must 
 not be made of this fact. It was not the general custom
 
 AN OLD HERBAL 35 
 
 among scholars in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries to inscribe their names in their books, and 
 book-plates were almost unknown. And that Fuchs' 
 Herbal would have strongly appealed to our botanical 
 Dean must be allowed. Moreover, he must have heard 
 of its publication from his contemporary, Dr Turner, 
 the Dean of Wells. Dr Turner was also a doctor of 
 medicine, and though a Cambridge man had stayed up 
 at Oxford when Dr Warner was Warden of All Souls 
 and Professor of Medicine " for conversation of men 
 and books," and the two men in all probability must 
 have met. At any rate they would know each other 
 as the respective deans of not far distant cathedrals. 
 Dr Turner, too, was a correspondent of Leonhard Fuchs, 
 and moreover utilised his friends' woodcuts to illustrate 
 his own Herbal. It is impossible, therefore, that our 
 Dean could have been ignorant of the magnificent work 
 of the great German botanist, and it would be pleasant 
 to think that when a copy was sent over from Basle to 
 Dr Turner another had been dispatched to Dr Warner, 
 and that this copy he afterwards bequeathed, with the 
 De Medica Materia of Dioscorides and the De Natura 
 Stirpium of Ruellius, to the Cathedral library. If this 
 tracing of the " pedigree " be correct, and it will be 
 admitted that it is not impossible, then an additional 
 interest is attached to our fine copy of Fuchs' Herbal, 
 which in itself is not the least precious volume in our 
 collection.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HAMPSHIRE YEWS 
 
 is no reason to doubt that the yew-tree 
 - is indigenous in this country. It is more fre- 
 quently seen in the south of England than in the north, 
 and in the counties of Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, and 
 Wiltshire, than elsewhere. And of these counties 
 Hampshire is its favourite home. Indeed it is so 
 generally met with in the uplands of Hampshire, 
 scattered singly over, the rolling chalk downs or rising 
 in majesty from some ancient hedgerow, or clinging 
 perhaps to the almost perpendicular face of one of our 
 hanging woods, that the yew has been called, not in- 
 aptly, " the Hampshire weed." Its wide distribution 
 in the county was noticed by the early botanical 
 writers. Mr John Goodyer, a famous " searcher after 
 simples," writing to the editor of the second edition of 
 Gerard's Herbal on igth December 1621, says : " In 
 Hampshire there is good plenty of yew-trees growing 
 wilde on the chalkie hills, and in church-yards where 
 they have been planted." The yew-tree is character- 
 istic of our churchyards, where many noble specimens, 
 magnificent even in decay, may be seen. In the posses- 
 sion of churchyard yews Hampshire stands undoubtedly 
 ahead of any other county. 
 
 There is a strange fascination about a venerable yew- 
 tree standing perhaps alone in its glory on some lonely 
 
 36
 
 HAMPSHIRE YEWS 37 
 
 down, or in some sequestered churchyard. " Fear and 
 trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight, Death the 
 skeleton, and Time the shadow " seem, as Wordsworth 
 said, associated with it. Who can forget his lines on 
 the yew-tree of Lorton Vale : 
 
 "Which to this day stands singly, in the midst 
 Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore ; 
 Of vast circumference and gloom profound 
 This solitary Tree ! a living thing 
 Produced too slowly ever to decay ; 
 Of form and aspect too magnificent 
 To be destroyed." 
 
 Hampshire can show many such lordly yew-trees. 
 The open downs around Winchester, and in the north 
 of the county, are dotted here and there with yews, 
 some of them of vast antiquity. They are frequent, 
 too, in the wide, tangled hedgerows which often border 
 some ancient track, such as the Pilgrim's Way. The 
 Roman Road, which formerly ran from Winchester to 
 Sarum, now a grassy track through a lonely stretch of 
 most attractive country, is indicated here and there by 
 yew-trees. So with the historic lane known as " the 
 king's lane," overgrown in places with brambles and 
 blackthorn along which ohe day in August, noo, the 
 body of the Red King, dripping gore all the way, was 
 borne in a " crazy two- wheeled cart of a charcoal 
 burner, drawn by a sorry nag," from the New Forest 
 to Winchester yew-trees mark its course between 
 Hursley and the cathedral city. In other parts of the 
 county, as around Selborne and Hambledon, where 
 steep " hangers " are a distinguishing feature of the 
 country-side, the dark green, almost black, foliage of 
 the yew mingles in delightful contrast with the lighter
 
 38 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 verdure of the beeches. There are also many noble 
 specimens to be seen in the New Forest, in spite of the 
 fact that the yew-tree, being unprotected by forest 
 laws, has often, as Gilpin tells us, " been made booty of 
 by those who durst not lay violent hands on the oak or 
 the ash." And no tree is more valuable for posts and 
 rails. A post of yew, say the squatters of the Forest, 
 will outlast a post of iron. Still there are a number of 
 fine yews left. One tree of peculiar beauty occupied a 
 small knoll not far from Boldre Church, which was a 
 special favourite with the author of Forest Scenery, for 
 " in point of picturesque beauty " it probably equalled, 
 he considered, any yew-tree in the country. At Sloden, 
 too, not far from the spot where Rufus fell, there is " a 
 thick wood of yews, standing massive and black ; in 
 all their depth of foliage mixed, in loveliest contrast, 
 with clumps of white-beams." 
 
 Hampshire, too, possesses the finest yew avenue in 
 England. This remarkable stretch of trees is situated 
 in the parish of Chilton Candover, some five miles from 
 Alresford, where for more than half-a-mile it runs 
 from the high road to the site of a Saxon church, unfor- 
 tunately pulled down in 1876, arid an ancient mansion 
 now also destroyed. The trees stand about forty feet 
 apart, their branches joining for the most part through- 
 out the entire length. The effect produced is most 
 striking. It is difficult to estimate, with any degree of 
 certainty, the age of yew-trees ; but in the opinion of 
 experts the avenue was probably planted in the four- 
 teenth or fifteenth century. 
 
 That the yew-tree has the singular power of renew- 
 ing, as it were, its youth, is well known to all lovers of 
 nature. When an ancient trunk has become decayed
 
 HAMPSHIRE YEWS 39 
 
 and hollow, a new stem or branch will sometimes be 
 found growing within the old shell. Numberless in- 
 stances are on record. Thus at Upper Clatford, near 
 Andover, there is a fine old yew-tree with no less than 
 thirteen separate stems growing from the hollow shell. 
 Other instances in Hampshire may be seen at Mottisf ont 
 on the Test, at West Tisted, at Corhampton in the 
 Meon Valley, and other places. 
 
 When growing naturally there are few more striking 
 objects on the country-side than a stately yew-tree. In 
 its spring dress, when the branches are covered with 
 dusty blossoms, an old male yew presents a beautiful 
 appearance. It seems to change its colour, as Mr 
 Dewar has pointed out, when viewed from different 
 positions. " By mid-March it does not look green in 
 some lights ; at any rate, green is not its chief colour. 
 We see yews a hundred yards away of a red or brown 
 colour, which, on nearer inspection, alter to a flesh tint." 
 Charming too, as Charles Waterton says in one of his 
 Essays on Natural History, is the appearance of the 
 female tree after the sun has passed the autumnal equi- 
 nox. " The delicate crimson of its fruit, with the dark 
 green leaves behind it, produces an effect so pleasing to 
 the view that it can scarcely be surpassed by anything 
 which the southern forests present to the lover of 
 beauty." 
 
 But the yew has suffered from superstitious associa- 
 tions, both in ancient and in mediaeval times. It was 
 doubtless regarded as a sacred tree in the days of the 
 Druids. The poets give to it such epithets as " dismal," 
 and "fatal," and even " double fatal." " Slips of yew 
 silvered in the moon's eclipse " formed part of the 
 ingredients of the witches' cauldron in Macbeth. In
 
 40 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 popular imagination, the tree was so venomous that 
 " the fruit thereof being eaten is not onely dangerous 
 and deadly unto man, but if any doe sleepe under the 
 shadow thereof it causeth sicknesse and oftentimes 
 death." It is interesting to notice that this opinion 
 was too much for even old Gerard, the herbalist, whose 
 work is full of strange conceits and startling supersti- 
 tions. After mentioning the vulgar belief, he goes on to 
 say : " All which I dare boldly affirme is altogether un- 
 true ; for when I was yong and went to schoole, divers 
 of my schoole-fellowes and likewise my selfe did eat our 
 fils of the berries of this tree, and have not onely slept 
 under the shadow thereof, but among the branches also, 
 without any hurt at all, and that not one time, but 
 many times." The same testimony is borne by the 
 early botanist, L'Obel ; and Sir Thomas Browne, in his 
 Vulgar Errors, boldly declares : " That yew and the 
 berries thereof are harmlesse, we know/' It should, 
 however, be added that, in spite of these emphatic 
 assertions cases are on record of children being poisoned 
 by yew berries, although it appears that the mischief 
 was rather due to the hard, green seeds than to the 
 succulent scarlet covering. To cows and horses the 
 tree is a deadly poison, as many farmers have found to 
 their cost, and even the clippings of a yew hedge thrown 
 inadvertently into a yard have been known to destroy 
 a whole dairy of cows. And yet, strange to say, as 
 Gilbert White has pointed out, " sheep and turkeys and, 
 as park-keepers say, deer, will crop these trees with 
 impunity." 
 
 But noted as Hampshire is for the prevalence of 
 indigenous yew-trees scattered throughout the country, 
 it is no less remarkable for its churchyard yews. In
 
 HAMPSHIRE YEWS 41 
 
 the north of England the ash, the lime and the horse- 
 chestnut are more frequently found in churchyards, 
 but in Hampshire there is hardly a churchyard without 
 its yew-tree, sometimes of the most venerable antiquity. 
 Many are the theories as to why our forefathers planted 
 yew-trees in churchyards. It has been suggested that 
 the custom arose in order to supply material for the 
 manufacture of bows, or to screen the churches from 
 the violence of storms, or to afford shelter to the con- 
 gregation waiting for the service on Sundays. But 
 these theories are, in the highest degree, unlikely. 
 Other antiquarians have seen in the churchyard yew an 
 emblem of mortality, from its sombre and funereal 
 appearance ; others, like the illustrious John Ray, an 
 emblem rather of immortality, from its ever-green foli- 
 age and the immense age to which it will attain ; while 
 other authorities assert that in mediaeval times the 
 branches were commonly used instead of palms for the 
 processions on Palm Sunday and on other occasions. 
 There is much to be said for these latter suggestions. 
 The yew-tree clearly had some religious significance. 
 Shakespeare speaks of a " shroud of white, stuck all 
 with yew." But the religious significance doubtless 
 went back, as we have seen, to pagan times. Later 
 on, it would seem, when Christianity was introduced 
 into England, the good monks, mindful of the in- 
 structions of Pope Gregory, and desiring to deal gently 
 with their new converts, enriched the pagan conceptions 
 with Christian ideals. In some instances there is 
 reason to believe that a Christian church was intention- 
 ally erected by the side of a " sacred tree " ; in other 
 cases a yew was deliberately planted at the time of the 
 erection of the building, and when at length a Christian
 
 42 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 symbolism came to be associated with yew-trees, it 
 became customary to plant them in churchyards 
 generally. 
 
 In support of this contention, it is noteworthy that, 
 in the case of several of our Hampshire churches which 
 date back to Anglo-Saxon times, a venerable yew-tree, 
 at least coeval with the church, stands beside it ; while, 
 in more than one instance, the yew seems to be older 
 than the church, and doubtless the church owes its 
 position to the yew-tree and not the yew-tree to the 
 church. Thus, on the northern slope of Portsdown Hill, 
 not far from the Nelson Monument, stands the little 
 Saxon church of Boarhunt. It is mentioned in Domes- 
 day Book, and part of the present structure the walls, 
 the chancel arch, and one of the windows dates back 
 to the days of Edward the Confessor. Near the south 
 doorway stands a yew-tree of hoary antiquity. The 
 trunk is hollow and is capable of holding a goodly 
 number of persons. It must have been a fine tree 
 when the church was built, nearly nine hundred years 
 ago. The tiny church of Corhampton presents another 
 instance in point. The church is remarkable, not only 
 for its undoubted pre-Conquest features, but also for 
 possessing a Saxon sundial on the south wall of the 
 nave. Within a few yards of the sundial stands the 
 ancient yew-tree, the trunk of which measures over 
 22 feet in circumference, and which was probably a 
 flourishing tree, held in reverence by the Jutish tribes- 
 men who occupied the Meon Valley when good Bishop 
 Wilfred preached to them the Gospel. Another pre- 
 Norman church is to be seen at Breamore, on the con- 
 fines of the New Forest, and here, too, a yew-tree of 
 most venerable antiquity stands in the churchyard.
 
 HAMPSHIRE YEWS 43 
 
 Like the Boarhunt tree, it is completely hollow, and the 
 bole measures in circumference no less than 23 feet 
 4 inches. In these instances the yew-trees are probably 
 older than the churches by the side of which they 
 flourish, and were doubtless regarded with veneration 
 before the Christian edifice gave them an additional 
 sanctity. 
 
 Among the finest yews in Hampshire must un- 
 doubtedly be included the classic tree in Selborne 
 churchyard. Gilbert White, in one of his Letters, thus 
 speaks of it : "In the churchyard of this village is a 
 yew-tree, whose aspect bespeaks it to be of a great age ; 
 it seems to have seen several centuries, and is probably 
 coeval with the church, and therefore may be deemed 
 an antiquity ; the body is squat, short, and thick, and 
 measures (upwards of) twenty-three feet in the girth, 
 supporting a head of suitable extent to its bulk. This 
 is a male tree which in the spring sheds clouds of dust, 
 and fills the atmosphere with its farina." Much in- 
 terest has, not unnaturally, been taken in the Selborne 
 yew-tree, and it has been visited by many naturalists. 
 Thirty years after White's death William Cobbett, on one 
 of his " Rural Rides," passed through Selborne, when, 
 under date "Thursday, 7th August, 1823," he writes: 
 " I measured the yew-tree in the churchyard, and found 
 the trunk to be, according to my measurement, twenty- 
 three feet eight inches in circumference. The whole 
 tree," he adds, " appears to be in perfect health." In 
 the year 1844, Dr Bell Salter, a distinguished botanist, 
 made the measurement to be 24 feet 8 inches, but men- 
 tions that the vicar of the parish informed him that " at 
 one part it measured twenty-seven feet." I myself 
 measured the famous tree a few years back, and found
 
 44 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 the trunk to be, at four feet from the ground, where it 
 seemed to be the largest, 25 feet 2 inches. Besides 
 occasionally helping the Vicar of Selborne, Gilbert 
 White, it will be remembered, was for a short time 
 Sunday curate at Durley, near Bishop's Waltham, and 
 for nearly twenty-five years curate of Farringdon, a 
 small village about three miles from Selborne. It is 
 curious to notice that enormous yew-trees lend distinc- 
 tion to the churchyards of both Durley and Farringdon. 
 The trunk of the Durley tree measures 24 feet 6 inches 
 in circumference, while the Farringdon tree, which is in 
 a state of great decay, is said to measure over 30 feet. 
 
 Many yew-trees have been claimed as the largest and 
 most magnificent specimens in Hampshire. William 
 Gilpin, in his classical work on Forest Scenery, pub- 
 lished in 1791, would give the place of honour to the 
 immense yew in the churchyard of Dibden. "It is 
 now," he wrote, " in the decline of life. But its hollow 
 trunk still supports three vast stems, and measures 
 below them about thirty feet in circumference a girth 
 which perhaps no other yew-tree in England can ex- 
 hibit." Mr Dewar considers that " the greatest and 
 perhaps the oldest " yew-tree in Hampshire is the mag- 
 nificent ruin to be seen in the churchyard of Woodcot 
 in the north of the county. It is sadly battered about, 
 owing to the exposed situation, but it still shows " con- 
 siderable signs of vitality," and its trunk has a circum- 
 ference of 27 feet 6 inches. From a picturesque stand- 
 point there are few finer yew-trees than the beautiful 
 example standing in Brockenhurst churchyard, which, 
 " from the Conqueror's day to this hour has darkened 
 the graves of generations." I should feel inclined, how- 
 ever, with the late Mr T. W. Shore, to give the palm to
 
 HAMPSHIRE YEWS 45 
 
 the truly noble specimen in the churchyard of South 
 Hayling. It stands near the south porch of the church, 
 which is the usual situation of our most venerable 
 churchyard yews. At a distance of four feet from the 
 ground its trunk has a circumference of 35 feet, while 
 its branches spread over a surface more than 20 yards 
 in diameter. 
 
 Any notice of our Hampshire yews would be incom- 
 plete without mention of a few other examples of excep- 
 tional size and interest. At Hurstbourne Priors and at 
 St Mary Bourne, in the valley of the Upper Test, splendid 
 yew-trees, whose " thousand years of gloom " would 
 seem to be no exaggeration, give sombre dignity to the 
 churchyards. The church of St Mary Bourne is note- 
 worthy as possessing one of the seven Norman fonts of 
 black marble from Tournai in Belgium, which were 
 brought over to England in the second half of the twelfth 
 century, probably during the episcopate of Henry de 
 Blois, younger brother of King Stephen. Another of 
 these famous fonts stands in the nave of Winchester 
 Cathedral. It is interesting to think that the fine yew- 
 tree, then in comparative youth, standing in the church- 
 yard of St Mary Bourne, must have witnessed the 
 arrival of the massive marble font and its erection in 
 the Norman church. Other notable yew-trees are to 
 be seen in the churchyards of Warblington, of Colmer, 
 of Prior's Dean, of West Tisted, near Alton ; and of 
 Hound, near Netley Abbey. 
 
 In comparatively modern times the age of a church- 
 yard yew is sometimes revealed by a record in the 
 parish register. Thus at St Mary Bourne we meet with 
 the entry under nth April 1759 : " For setting ye yew- 
 tree, 6s. 6d." This tree, which stands at a respectful
 
 46 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 distance from its mighty neighbour, was planted over 
 the grave of one Paul Holdway, to prevent the remains, 
 so it was said, from being disturbed. Other entries with 
 reference to the planting of churchyard yews are to be 
 found in the parish records of Hurstbourne Tarrant in 
 1692, of Basingstoke in 1694 and again in 1745, of Bin- 
 stead in 1754, of Wyke near Winchester, in 1762, and 
 elsewhere. Occasionally the planting of a yew-tree 
 has associations of peculiar interest. Shortly after the 
 Restoration, Thomas Ken, the author of Our Morning 
 and Evening Hymns, afterwards Bishop of Bath and 
 Wells, was appointed by Bishop Morley to the rectory 
 of East Woodhay in the north of Hampshire. He held 
 the living only from 1669 to 1672, but he signalised his 
 residence by planting a yew-tree in the churchyard, on 
 the north side of the church. The tree is now therefore 
 nearly two hundred and fifty years old. But so slow is 
 the growth of the yew-tree, after the first hundred years, 
 that its trunk now measures only 7 feet 7 inches in cir- 
 cumference. This gives some idea of the vast age of 
 those venerable giants which can show a girth measure- 
 ment of 25 or even 30 feet. That the growth is at first 
 comparatively rapid is demonstrated by a number of 
 examples, of which the following historic instance may 
 be selected. In the churchyard of Portchester, of which 
 parish I was once the vicar, again on the north side of 
 the church, a yew-tree of respectable appearance may 
 be seen. The church stands within the Roman en- 
 closure of Portchester Castle, where, during the 
 Napoleonic wars, a large number of French prisoners 
 were confined. It appears that the smoke from the 
 French kitchens effectually destroyed the venerable 
 yew-tree which had stood for centuries beside the
 
 HAMPSHIRE YEWS 47 
 
 Norman church. On the declaration of peace, and the 
 departure of the prisoners in 1814, the churchwardens, 
 so we learn from their account-book, planted a new yew- 
 tree in the place of the one destroyed. The tree is 
 therefore over one hundred years old, and the trunk 
 now measures 7 feet 2 inches in circumference. It will 
 probably not be very much larger a century hence. 
 
 It is a curious fact that while the yew-tree is so 
 common on the mainland of the county as to have 
 gained for it the name of " the Hampshire weed," it is 
 exceedingly scarce in the Isle of Wight. Although the 
 geological conditions are practically identical, yet the 
 downs of the island are almost entirely destitute of 
 yews. There are one or two trees on the chalk down 
 above Nunwell, and that is all. This doubtless accounts 
 for the fact that the yew is almost entirely absent from 
 the island churchyards. I can only recall a single in- 
 stance of a yew-tree in any of the churchyards of the 
 Isle of Wight.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE OLD WALLS OF WINCHESTER 
 
 THERE is a charm and fascination about old walls 
 which appeal to all lovers of antiquity. They 
 lend a sense of awe and mystery to their surroundings, 
 and inspire the imagination with quickening thoughts 
 of bygone generations. The Roman walls of Silchester 
 and Portchester in Hampshire, the mediaeval town walls 
 of Southampton, the monastic walls which formerly 
 enclosed the splendid abbeys of Netley and Beaulieu 
 and Quarr, all speak persuasively of the past. So with 
 the ancient walls of Winchester, of which long stretches 
 are still standing. Sections of the wall which once 
 encompassed the mediaeval city may be seen, sometimes 
 hidden away in gardens and backyards. The Cathedral 
 Close is shut in by the lofty, monastic walls of the once- 
 famous Benedictine priory. Wykeham's College of 
 " Sainte Marie of Wynchestre " and Cardinal Beaufort's 
 noble Hospital of St Cross alike show fine stretches of 
 mediaeval masonry, on which many a choice wild flower 
 blossoms in peace. Nor are interesting examples of 
 early brickwork wanting. Long w&lls of masonry, with 
 the comparatively thin red bricks arranged in ancient 
 fashion, first a line of " headers " and then of 
 " stretchers " placed in alternate rows, may be seen at 
 College and within the Close, reminding us of the period 
 between the Reformation and the Commonwealth, or 
 
 48
 
 THE OLD WALLS OF WINCHESTER 49 
 
 when, after the Restoration, Charles II. loved to 
 frequent the ancient capital of England. 
 
 These old walls, attractive as they are to the archae- 
 ologist and the historian, appeal no less strongly to the 
 botanist. Ancient walls may be said to carry a flora of 
 their own, and many a rare and interesting species has 
 made its home on the walls of Winchester. Perhaps 
 the oldest wall, which formerly formed part of the de- 
 fences of the city, is to be seen at the eastern side of the 
 grounds of Wolvesey Palace. It is made of flint and 
 concrete, and shows what is known as " long and short " 
 masonry, herringbone flint-work, with a large number 
 of Roman bricks built into it. This wall is a veritable 
 rock-garden in spring and summer-time. Numbers of 
 comparatively inconspicuous plants, such as the little 
 white whitlow-grass, the " darling blue " speedwell, the 
 tiny pearlwort, the rue-leaved saxifrage, are abund- 
 ant. Early in May the wallflower begins to open, and 
 by the middle of the month will be in full bloom. It 
 covers the broken walls, and the picturesque ruins 
 of Wolvesey hard by, in glorious profusion. Later 
 on the wild snapdragon will be in flower, and the 
 purple foxglove, and the ploughman's spikenard ; 
 while masses of the fragrant thyme will blossom 
 in the crumbling masonry, and tall spikes of the 
 great yellow mullein will stand sentinel over the quiet 
 scene. 
 
 Nothing can exceed the beauty of the Close walls 
 when the familiar gillyflower gilds with its pale yellow 
 blossoms the grey masonry. But choicer species may 
 be seen. On one length of wall, which separates a pre- 
 bendal garden from the Cathedral graveyard, a colony 
 of the blue fleabane (Erigeron acre, L.) has established
 
 50 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 itself. The blue fleabane, which is by no means a 
 common plant, is usually found on downs or heath- 
 lands, but there, on the coping of the Canon's wall, it 
 blossoms every summer, in company with a patch of 
 delicate hair-bell, which also loves the open country. 
 Strange to say, the blue fleabane is a scarce plant about 
 Winchester, but in some unknown manner it has found 
 its way to the friendly seclusion of the Close wall, and 
 there it has flourished happily for many years. Far 
 rarer, however, than the blue fleabane is the purple 
 Linaria (L. purpurea, L.), so rare indeed that it has not 
 acquired an English name, for its true home is on the 
 mountains of Hungary. It is a tall and stately plant, 
 with a long slender spike of purple flowers, and so con- 
 spicuous when standing on the top of a wall that it 
 cannot fail to arrest the attention. And on the top of 
 the Close wall it flourishes, out of harm's way, some 
 eighteen to twenty feet above the roadway, and makes 
 a fine show in late summer-time. How or when it got 
 there is unknown. It is not recorded for any other 
 locality in Hampshire, or indeed in the adjacent coun- 
 ties ; but on the summit of the lofty monastic walls 
 which enclose the north-west corner of the old Benedic- 
 tine monastery it has been observed for many years. 
 It is beyond question the most distinguished denizen 
 of our ancient walls, and corresponds to the rare Scnecio 
 which graces the walls of Oxford, to the wall-rocket of 
 Southampton, the wild pink of Beaulieu, the Sedum of 
 Portchester, the little Holosteum of Norwich and Bury 
 St Edmunds, the " London rocket " which, after the 
 Great Fire, covered the blackened ruins. Our purple 
 Linaria is now spreading to other walls in Winchester, 
 and even appears as a weed in the Close gardens.
 
 THE OLD WALLS OF WINCHESTER 51 
 
 Ferns do not flourish in Hampshire as they do in the 
 moister climate of the west of England, but a few inter- 
 esting species may be seen on our walls. On the ruins 
 of the Norman chapter-house the polypody fern is 
 abundant ; indeed, in company with the handsome red 
 spur-valerian, it covers the wide coping which protects 
 the western front. Often in summer-time the plant 
 appears to wither and almost to disappear ; but with 
 the first rains of autumn the masonry is again green 
 with the beautiful pinnatifid fronds. So with Thur- 
 burn's Chantry at College. The stone roof is covered 
 with the polypody fern. On the walls of the Close, and 
 on those of College and St Cross, the attractive little 
 wall-rue is comparatively common, and in several 
 places the rarer maidenhair-spleenwort may be seen. 
 On one secluded line of masonry, hidden away from 
 public observation, it has taken possession of the wall 
 and flourishes as happily as in the damper atmosphere 
 of Devon or Cornwall. We should not expect to find in 
 Hampshire, at least in any abundance, the scaly ceter- 
 ach, which sometimes covers the stone walls in the 
 west ; but several solitary plants, known only to a few 
 individuals, grace the walls of Winchester and manage 
 to maintain a difficult existence. 
 
 The pellitory-of-the-wall (Parietaria officinalis, L.), 
 as its name indicates alike in Latin and in English, is so 
 called because of its characteristic habit of clothing with 
 its shaggy foliage old walls and structures. In its 
 purely native surroundings in prehistoric times, before 
 buildings were erected by human agency, the species 
 doubtless flourished on rocks and cliffs ; and in such a 
 position I have noticed it at the entrance to the Tilly- 
 Whim caves, near Swanage, in Dorsetshire. Needless
 
 52 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 to say, it abounds at Winchester, where, in the Close, 
 at College, and on the ruins of Wolvesey : 
 
 " The mouldering walls are seen 
 Hung with pellitory green." 
 
 Its specific name, officinalis, reveals the connection of 
 the plant with herbalism. In mediaeval times it was 
 held to be of wonderful virtue in cases of " stone and 
 gravell," and also for " old coughs and hot swellings in 
 the throat." Other plants were sought after for their 
 commercial value. One stretch of city wall is covered 
 with a near relation of the wild mignonette, known as 
 dyer's-weed. It is a tall plant, with long spikes of pale 
 yellow-green flowers, and its English name, which goes 
 back to the days of old Gerard and the early botanists, 
 indicates the use made of it. It was prized for the sake 
 of the fine yellow dye which it produces, and we may 
 associate many a handsome bale of broadcloth or 
 woollen stuff sold, it may be, at St Giles' Fair in 
 mediaeval times, with the striking species which now 
 blossoms every summer on the city walls. 
 
 An old wall often offers a sanctuary to some scarce 
 species which loves to nestle beneath its shadow and 
 protection. In the year 1850 a writer speaks of the 
 strange plant Aristolochia, or birthwort, as abundantly 
 established " under the old garden wall of the hospital 
 of St Cross, near Winchester. " It is a very rare species, 
 formerly in high repute for its supposed medicinal 
 virtues, and when found is mostly in the neighbourhood 
 of monastic ruins. At St Cross I have repeatedly 
 searched for it in vain, although I have little doubt that 
 it still exists in some hidden corner of the precincts. It 
 was with much interest that one day last summer I
 
 THE OLD WALLS OF WINCHESTER 53 
 
 noticed beneath the shelter of the Dean's garden wall a 
 fine plant of Atropa Belladonna, or the deadly night- 
 shade. It is, of course, a rare species and as poisonous 
 as it is rare, but it is to be found in some plenty on a 
 weird and desolate warren some three miles from the 
 Cathedral city. In what manner the plant found its 
 way into Winchester I will not venture to declare ; 
 perhaps a bird carried the seed which, in the undis- 
 turbed seclusion of the Dean's garden, had germinated 
 and flourished. There, at any rate, the plant stood, 
 with its large, egg-shaped leaves and lurid purple 
 flowers, an unwonted resident in the Cathedral Close. 
 
 But a still more interesting discovery awaited me in 
 College meads. Beneath the shelter of an ancient wall, 
 close to a branch of the River Itchen, which, after flow- 
 ing through the Close and the warden's garden, makes 
 its way past the playing-fields, I found a fine clump of 
 the yellow balsam. I was naturally surprised, for I had 
 never met with the species before in Hampshire. So 
 taking a specimen home, I carefully examined it ; with- 
 out doubt it was Impatiens noli-me-tangere, L. Turn- 
 ing to the Flora of Hampshire, I found that it was un- 
 recorded for the county, but in a footnote enclosed in 
 square brackets there was a statement to the effect that 
 in an old copy of Smith's English Flora there was to be 
 seen the following entry in the handwriting of a " Miss 
 Barter," doubtless the warden's daughter : " The 
 Warden's garden, Winchester, quite wild, about 1835." 
 Was it possible that the plant still existed as a weed in 
 the warden's garden ? If so, its presence beneath the 
 college wall would be explained. Without delay I 
 hastened to the sacred enclosure, and there, beside the 
 flowing stream, were numbers of balsam plants, grow-
 
 54 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 ing like weeds and apparently " quite wild." It was 
 over eighty years since the plant had been recorded. 
 During that long period it had "wasted its sweet- 
 ness on the desert air." And there it was to-day, as 
 thoroughly established as when the warden's daughter 
 had made her brief entry in the copy of Smith's Flora 
 in the year 1835. It was a thrilling discovery. The 
 mystery of my clump of Noli-me-tangere was now 
 explained.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 COLLEGE WATERMEADS 
 
 THE River Itchen, immediately below Winchester, 
 flows in three separate channels. There is the 
 main river known as the Old Barge ; which occupies the 
 central position, and there are two side streams, both 
 of them due to human agency, which may be called 
 respectively the Canal and St jEthelwold's stream. 
 The latter was diverted by Bishop ^Ethelwold in the 
 tenth century so as to run through the precincts of 
 St Swithin's Priory. It still flows from the site of the 
 ancient " Nunna-minster " Mill through the Cathedral 
 Close, and from thence runs underneath the bridge in 
 College Street, past the Warden's Lodgings, beneath the 
 old College water-mill, until at length it rejoins the main 
 river in the meadows below. The Canal, too, is of very 
 early origin. In a Saxon charter of the eleventh 
 century mention is made of the " new river," but the 
 present channel seems almost certainly to be the work 
 of Bishop de Lucy, who received a charter from King 
 John to levy toll on all goods entering the city " through 
 the trench or canal which he had caused to be made." 
 The sweet, luscious water-meadows which lie be- 
 tween Canal on the east and St ^Ethelwold's stream on 
 the west, and through which the Old Barge flows, are 
 known as " Watermeads," and are full of interest and 
 delight at all seasons of the year. The river abounds in 
 
 55
 
 56 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 fish, and in spite of a clause in the College statutes 
 which forbids the gentle art of angling, it cannot be 
 doubted that numbers of Wykehamists have first learnt 
 to throw a fly over its clear waters. It will be re- 
 membered by readers of Frank Buckland's biography 
 that Watermeads was specially dear to the heart of the 
 young naturalist when he was a boy at college. He 
 knew, we are told, every bird in the hedges, every 
 snake, shrew and water-rat in the banks, every eel and 
 crayfish in the pleasant streams. He was the plague 
 of the poor " Waterman's " life. " There's no keeping 
 no fish nor nuffin' from him," the old keeper would say. 
 On one occasion, however, " Waterman " very nearly 
 caught his enemy, but, says Buckland, " I gave him a 
 tremendous chase across the meads and through the 
 various water-courses, and ultimately had to swim the 
 river to get away from him. The sleeves of our college 
 gowns acted as pockets, and I had two trout in one 
 sleeve and one in the other. When swimming the river 
 the fish in my sleeves came to life again, and I had a 
 hard job to land myself and my fish." 
 
 The most striking feature in Watermeads, apart from 
 its associations, is the fine willow-tree, of peculiarly 
 attractive shape and appearance, which rises from the 
 edge of the Old Barge in nearly the centre of the 
 meadow. The main trunk of the tree has long lost its 
 perpendicular position, and, like Shakespeare's willow 
 
 " Grows aslant the brook, 
 And shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." 
 
 It is impossible not to notice it, so arresting is its ap- 
 pearance, with its comparatively low, wide-spreading 
 branches, which present, as it were, a complete
 
 COLLEGE WATERMEADS 57 
 
 miniature in itself, like the clump of beech-trees which 
 crown the hill beyond. Indeed, a representation of the 
 tree has found a place in two stained-glass windows in 
 the diocese of Winchester. One may be seen in the 
 historic church of St Thomas a Becket at Portsmouth, 
 the advowson of which living belongs to College ; and 
 the other in Prior Silksteade's Chapel, in the south 
 transept of the Cathedral. The latter window is dedi- 
 cated to the memory of Izaak Walton, who passed his 
 old age at Winchester, living with his daughter and 
 son-in-law in the Cathedral Close, and who eventually 
 died there during the great frost of 1683. l He must 
 often have wandered down Watermeads, rod in hand, 
 and doubtless caught many a fish in the swift stream 
 " full of great stores of trout." Walton's association 
 with Winchester could hardly have been more fittingly 
 represented than in the painted window of the Cathedral , 
 where we see the old fisherman resting under the willow- 
 tree by the water-side, engaged in the peaceful occupa- 
 tion of reading, with this motto inscribed beneath : 
 " Study to be quiet." Lower down the river, in the 
 water-meadows which adjoin the ancient Hospital of 
 St Cross, willow-trees are abundant. They line the 
 banks of the Itchen and of the water-courses which flow 
 from it. But nowhere will you see a specimen which 
 for picturesque appearance can be compared with the 
 willow of Watermeads. It stands alone, unique in 
 grace and beauty, without a rival, and beyond compare. 
 The shelter of the willow-tree affords a happy retreat 
 to many of the water-fowl that frequent the stream. 
 The banks of the river, too, are clothed with a dense 
 growth of reeds and tall grasses, and in summer-time of 
 1 See chap, xxiii.
 
 58 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 such coarse plants as comfrey and willow-herb and 
 water-dock. Moreover, the ground around is swampy 
 and difficult of approach, and birds are quick to discover 
 a safe and secure refuge. In the Old Barge, near the 
 willow-tree, dabchicks dive and splash about in the 
 stream, and moorhens swim sedately among the water- 
 weeds. One season a couple of coots made their appear- 
 ance and took possession of a side-stream. They 
 doubtless came from a sheet of water known as Fisher's 
 Pond, some five miles away, where they congregate in 
 large numbers. We could do without them in Water- 
 meads, for they are pugnacious birds, and often drive 
 away rarer and more interesting species. In another 
 part of Watermeads there is a wild-ducks' nest, and a 
 couple of snipe are breeding at least the other evening 
 I heard them " drumming," a peculiar sound which 
 they make only in nesting-time. Numbers of reed- 
 sparrows or black-headed buntings haunt the rank 
 herbage that lines the river, and the chatter of the sedge- 
 warbler is unceasing. All day long swallows and sand- 
 martins dart over the surface of the water, and when the 
 atmosphere is heavy the swifts will leave the vicinity of 
 College Tower and join their confreres in the meadows 
 below. 
 
 In winter-time Watermeads is not destitute of bird 
 life. Morning and evening nights of wild-duck pass 
 overhead to or from the higher reaches of the Itchen ; 
 a stately heron may, perchance, be seen standing in the 
 shallower waterways, and a number of snipe feed in soft 
 and swampy places. Every winter a pair of " grey 
 wagtails," one of the most elegant and graceful of 
 British birds, haunt St ^Ethelwold's stream, and it is not 
 unlikely that a kingfisher will flash by. But the most
 
 COLLEGE WATERMEADS 59 
 
 distinctive feature in winter-time is the number of sea- 
 gulls which frequent the meadows. They arrive shortly 
 before Michaelmas and depart at the end of March. In 
 such numbers do they come as to give a special char- 
 acter to Watermeads. They belong almost entirely to 
 the " black-headed " species, and very attractive do 
 they appear, with their coral-coloured legs and beaks, 
 as they splash about in the water, or rest on some 
 picturesque wooden palings, or sail in companies over- 
 head. 
 
 The rank growth of grass in Watermeads is unfriendly 
 to the existence of rare and delicate species of wild 
 flowers. Our meadows cannot, like those of Oxford, 
 claim such a splendid denizen as the snake's head or 
 fritillary ; nor, as in the meads above the city, does the 
 beautiful buckbean put forth its exquisite flowers. 
 Still, in spring and early summer Watermeads presents 
 a bright appearance, with its wide sheets of buttercups 
 and marsh-marigolds and of pale lilac cuckoo-flowers. 
 Later on, the banks of the river will be gay with yellow 
 flags and purple comfrey, and with the still more showy 
 blossoms of the North American Mimulus or monkey 
 flower, which has completely established itself in many 
 parts of Hampshire. Between College and St Cross its 
 large yellow flowers reflect themselves in many places 
 on the clear surface of the stream. A few choicer plants, 
 too, may be found. In several of the waterways the 
 interesting bladderwort flourishes, and the rarer form 
 of it, known to botanists as Utricularia neglecta, Lehm. 
 A few seasons ago a strange species suddenly appeared 
 on a bank of mud, which had been thrown up out of the 
 stream the previous winter. I noticed a patch of 
 yellow blossoms which I did not recognise on the farther
 
 60 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 side of the water, and on going round I saw a plant 
 which was new to me. It proved to be Nasturtium 
 sylvestre, Br., or the creeping cress, a scarce relative 
 of the common watercress. It may seem strange how 
 it contrived to get there. The species is very rare in 
 Hampshire, and has only been found once or twice in 
 the county. Doubtless, however, the seed had drifted 
 down the stream from some spot in the upper reaches of 
 the Itchen, and had eventually sunk in the mud opposite 
 College Meads. How long it lay buried in the silt at 
 the bottom of the water none can tell. At length the 
 mud was cleared out and deposited along the bank of 
 the river. And there, the following spring, the seed 
 germinated and sprang up and blossomed abundantly, 
 to the delight of more than one botanist to whom 
 Watermeads is hallowed ground.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 " HILLS " 
 
 AMONG the most popular saints in England 
 during the Middle Ages must be reckoned St 
 Catherine of Alexandria. Indeed, of female saints she 
 ranked in general esteem next to St Mary Magdalene. 
 Martyred according to tradition, under the tyrant 
 Maximin in the third century, her body was taken by 
 angels and carried over the desert and the Red Sea and 
 finally deposited in a marble sarcophagus on the summit 
 of Mount Sinai. Hence the chapels dedicated to her 
 honour were mostly erected on the tops of hills. In the 
 south of England a number of such chapels existed, the 
 remains of which may, in many cases, be seen unto this 
 day. There were shrines, for example, to her memory 
 on St Catherine's Hill, near Guildford, on Chale Down 
 in the Isle of Wight, on St Catherine's Hill, to the north 
 of Christ church on the borders of the New Forest, and 
 on the lofty height overlooking the sea above Abbots- 
 bury in Dorsetshire. 
 
 There was also a chapel, all traces of which have now 
 unfortunately disappeared, on the top of St Catherine's 
 Hill at Winchester. This hill, or " hills," as it has been 
 called by generations of college men, is a prominent and 
 beautiful feature in the landscape. A circular chalk 
 down, crowned with its clump of beech-trees, it rises 
 some 300 feet, immediately above the valley of the 
 61
 
 62 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Itchen, and commands from its summit a fine prospect 
 of Winchester, with its College and Cathedral, and 
 directly below of the venerable Hospital of St Cross. 
 The hill, too, is of interest, especially to field archae- 
 ologists, inasmuch as it possesses one of the largest and 
 most perfect examples of an early " camp " in Hamp- 
 shire. The entrenchment has been well described as 
 surrounding " like a crown " the top of the hill, the 
 sides of which, especially towards the south and west, 
 are nearly precipitous. In shape the camp is nearly 
 round, the trenches following the line of the hill, and is 
 calculated to embrace an area of twenty-three acres. 
 Many have been the conjectures as to the age and origin 
 of the earthworks which earlier writers were wont to 
 associate with the Danes. But the works are far older 
 than the time of the Danish invasion. They probably 
 date back to a period of some three to four thousand 
 years ago ; and if the theory be true that, as civilisation 
 advanced, the inhabitants of the hill-tops gradually 
 migrated into the valleys below, it is probable that 
 in standing within the circle of the ramparts on St 
 Catherine's Hill we are standing on the original site of 
 the oldest city in the south of England, if not in the 
 entire country. 
 
 Passing to historic times, it is of interest to notice 
 that possibly the earliest mention of " hills " is in con- 
 nection with King Cnut. We learn from The Win- 
 chester Annalist that the great king gave "three hides 
 of land called Hille " to the Old Minster, which until 
 quite recently formed part of the Cathedral property. 
 At what date the Chapel of St Catherine's was built 
 upon its summit is unknown. It existed, however, as 
 early as the thirteenth century, for in the year 1286 the
 
 " HILLS " 63 
 
 belfry is recorded to have been blown down. A little 
 later, we learn from a chart ulary of the Cathedral 
 Priory, it was customary to pay to St Swithun's " all 
 oblations coming from the chapell of St Katerine on her 
 feast-day, as well by day as by night, from vespers on 
 the Vigil of the feast to nightfall on the day after." In 
 the monastic rolls there are frequent allusions to this 
 yearly offering or oblation. Moreover the good brethren 
 kept her festival, which occurred on 25th November, 
 with becoming state and good cheer, for did not the hill 
 on which the chapel stood belong to the monastery ? 
 It was fitting, therefore, as the Diet-rolls reveal, that a 
 more generous fare, including wine for the chaplain and 
 a choice entree for the ministrants, should be provided 
 on that day. The chapel, it appears, was suppressed 
 by Cardinal Wolsey during his brief tenure of the see of 
 Winchester, and its revenues sequestered for the benefit 
 of his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. The antiquary 
 Leland, who visited Winchester a few years later, makes 
 the following observation : " Ther was a very fair 
 chapelle of S. Catarine on an hill scant half a mile with- 
 out Winchester town by south. This chapel was en- 
 dowid with landes. Thomas Wolsey, cardinal, caused 
 it to be suppressed, as I hard say." All traces of the 
 " fair chapelle " have now disappeared, and its actual 
 site can only be conjectured. 
 
 From early days Mons Catharina has been regarded 
 as sacred ground by successive generations of Wyke- 
 hamists, and many are the legends and customs associ- 
 ated with " Hills." One only need be mentioned. 
 There is an " old traditional story," which can be traced 
 back to the latter part of the seventeenth century, that 
 a scholar, who for some flagrant offence was left at
 
 64 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 college during the Whitsuntide vacation, endeavoured 
 to beguile his solitude by cutting a maze in the turf on 
 the top of " Hills," and by composing the Latin ode, 
 Dulce Domutn, but that he pined away, and eventually 
 died beneath the " Domum tree " singing his celebrated 
 song. The story is no doubt purely mythical ; but the 
 maze itself may be seen on St Catherine's Hill, and 
 gives a yet additional interest to the sacred mount. 
 For mazes are among the rarest of English antiquities. 
 Comparatively common in the Middle Ages, there are 
 very few now remaining. Two only exist in Hamp- 
 shire, one on Breamore Down and this one on St 
 Catherine's Hill. Unlike the Breamore miz-maze, ours 
 is square, but both are constructed on the same general 
 principle. There can be little reasonable doubt that 
 mazes are ecclesiastical in origin, and I should feel in- 
 clined to associate the one on St Catherine's Down with 
 acts of penance performed by mediaeval pilgrims when 
 visiting the ancient chapel which once crowned the hill. 
 In connection with the happy memories of " Hills," 
 which linger in the hearts of countless Wykehamists, it 
 may not be amiss to recall the singularly appropriate 
 lines of the poet Gray on the distant prospect of a not 
 less celebrated school : 
 
 " Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade 1 
 
 Ah, fields belov'd in vain ! 
 Where once my careless childhood stray'd, 
 
 A stranger yet to pain 1 
 I feel the gales that from ye blow 
 A momentary bliss bestow, 
 
 As waving fresh their gladsome wing, 
 My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
 And, redolent of joy and youth, 
 
 To breathe a second spring."
 
 " HILLS " 65 
 
 To others besides Wykehamists " Hills " is a spot of 
 pleasant associations. Rising from the water-meadows 
 of the Itchen valley, within a mile of the Cathedral, it 
 affords an easy walk to the citizens of Winchester. 
 Crowned with its clump of beech-trees it is a conspicu- 
 ous landmark in the district. The trees, of course, have 
 been planted by human hands, as is the case with 
 similar clumps on the chalk hills of Sussex and Wilts 
 and Dorset. The present clump is said to have been 
 planted by a company of the Gloucestershire Militia, 
 under the direction of Lord Botecourt, the colonel of 
 the regiment, when encamped on the hill towards the 
 close of the eighteenth century. The appearance of the 
 trees would seem to corroborate the truth of the tradi- 
 tion. But that an earlier clump stood upon the 
 summit of the hill is certain. There is preserved at 
 New College, Oxford, a manuscript of the Life of Wyke- 
 ham, written by Warden Chandler about the year 1462. 
 In this manuscript there is a drawing of the college, in 
 which St Catherine's Hill is shown with a noble clump 
 of trees standing on the top. It is clear, therefore, that 
 the " three hides of land called Hille " was crowned 
 with trees some centuries before the handiwork of the 
 Gloucestershire Militia. 
 
 The present clump, which has succeeded that of 
 Warden Chandler's illustration, consists of some forty 
 to fifty beech-trees and a few Scotch firs. The latter 
 are in a state of pitiable decay. Several are quite dead, 
 and their bare trunks, entirely destitute of bark, stand 
 out bleached and naked against the tender green foliage 
 of the beeches. On the south side of the clump, be- 
 neath the shelter of the trees, runs a low, straggling 
 thicket of brushwood, consisting mainly of cotoneaster
 
 66 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 bushes, with a few thorns and elders. How the cotone- 
 aster shrubs came to be present is unknown, and they 
 look strangely out of place on the top of the chalk down. 
 Numbers of wild flowers star the short turf in spring 
 and summer-time, and several choice and interesting 
 species may be met with. The month of June is the 
 best time to see the hill in its full glory. The milkwort 
 is then in bloom, with its dense masses of ultramarine 
 and purple and white flowers. But the yellow blossoms 
 of the Leguminosce predominate. The little bird's-foot 
 trefoil, with golden flowers passing into orange and even 
 red, is abundant, and the paler yellow blossoms of the 
 lady's-fingers. The much rarer tufted horseshoe vetch, 
 so called from the shape of the seed-vessels, which 
 resemble clusters of twisted talons or bunches of little 
 corkscrews, is also plentiful, and lends distinction to the 
 flora of the hill. Another choice plant is the spircea, or 
 dropwort, a near relation of the meadow-sweet, with its 
 elegantly cut foliage and pink-and- white petals, which 
 is not uncommon on the western slope of the down ; 
 while here and there a rare Senecio (S. campestris), or 
 ragwort, will be seen, looking, unlike most of its tribe, 
 dignified and even striking with its simple stem and 
 umbel of yellow flowers. Several species of orchis 
 grace the hill by their presence. Early in the season the 
 dwarf or green-winged orchis is in flower ; in June the 
 beautiful bee-orchis is plentiful, and has even spread to 
 the railway embankment below the hill ; with July the 
 curious frog-orchis will put forth its spike of green 
 flowers striped with dull red ; and later on the lady's- 
 tresses, with its fragrant white blossoms, will in some 
 seasons be abundant. 
 For hundreds of years these plants have flourished
 
 " HILLS " 67 
 
 on St Catherine's Hill. They were doubtless there in 
 the dim ages of the past when a Celtic tribe occupied 
 the situation ; in the days when King Cnut made over 
 the hill to the good monks of St Swithun ; when 
 pilgrims toiled up the mount to pay their vows at 
 the shrine of St Catherine and perhaps to do penance 
 amid the perplexities of the maze. There they have 
 blossomed, season after season, since William of Wyke- 
 ham founded his famous school, and generation after 
 generation of college men have gone " on Hills." And 
 there, it may be, in spite of the multiplication of military 
 camps around Winchester, they will continue to flourish 
 for long years yet to come ; and the swifts will return 
 every May and shriek around the hill-top as of yore, and 
 the peewits utter their wailing cry from the fallows 
 below, while overhead the kestrel will hover with out- 
 stretched wings, in search of the little field-mice whose 
 burrows run in every direction beneath the turf of the 
 famous hill.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ON SELBORNE COMMON 
 
 NEVER does Selborne Common look more attrac- 
 tive than when the trees are painted in their 
 autumn tints. I was wandering lately over the en- 
 chanted ground, so dear to Gilbert White, when the 
 beeches in the Hanger were in all their glory and the 
 thorns were loaded with scarlet fruit. " If," wrote the 
 great naturalist in his journal, under 26th October 1783, 
 " a masterly landscape painter was to take our hanging 
 woods in their autumnal colours, persons unacquainted 
 with the countiy would object to the strength and deep- 
 ness of the tints and would pronounce that they were 
 heightened and shaded beyond nature." " Wonderful, 
 indeed, and lovely " I thought the colouring as I made 
 my way along the pathways, through the bracken, and 
 tried to conjure up in my mind the many associations 
 of Selborne Common with the life and interests of the 
 immortal naturalist. 
 
 The down, or sheepwalk, known as Selborne Common 
 is, as White said, " a pleasing park-like spot, jutting 
 out on the verge of the hill country, where it begins to 
 break down into the plains." It runs from the top of 
 Selborne Hanger to the village of Newton Valence, about 
 a mile distant, and is as quiet and undisturbed as it 
 was in the eighteenth century. Rabbits scuttle about 
 in every direction, and a number of pheasants wild 
 
 68
 
 ON SELBORNE COMMON 69 
 
 birds, not reared in a coop by the gamekeeper have 
 made their home in the " park-like " solitude. The 
 horizon is bounded by " the vast range of mountains, 
 called the Sussex Downs " ; the waters of Wolmer 
 Pond may be seen gleaming in the distance ; while 
 in the more immediate vicinity " the noble chalk 
 promontory " of Nore Hill stands out boldly in the 
 landscape. 
 
 To reach the Common or sheepwalk from the village 
 of Selborne it is necessary to climb the Hanger, either 
 by the famous zigzag or by the pathway still known as 
 the Bostal. It is a stiff climb, for the top of the Hanger 
 is 300 feet above the level of the village street. The 
 walk was a favourite one with Gilbert White. The zig- 
 zag path was partly of his making, and the so-called 
 wishing-stone at the top of it was placed there by him- 
 self. He loved in spring-time to watch the beech-trees 
 bursting into leaf, and to note their change of colour as 
 the autumn advanced. All the year round he was con- 
 stantly climbing " the beech-grown hill " to " the straw- 
 clad cell " or hermitage which he had erected on the top, 
 or to wander about the Common which is constantly 
 alluded to in his historic letters. Many choice plants 
 he found blooming there, which he duly entered in his 
 notebook. On the Hanger he notices the spurge-laurel, 
 the hellebore, the autumn gentian, the bird's-nest 
 orchis, the yellow monotropa, all of which species con- 
 tinue to blossom there. On the Common, among the 
 brushwood, the Daphne mezereum grew, a very rare 
 and striking species, with fragrant pink flowers, which 
 appear early in the spring before the leaves are out. 
 There too the attractive orchis known as ladies'- 
 tresses puts forth its spiral spikes of pure white,
 
 70 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 sweet-scented flowers in the late summer-time, when 
 the hips and haws begin to ripen. 
 
 Many of White's observations are associated with 
 his beloved Common. There the nightjars were to be 
 seen of a summer's evening and the stone-curlew could 
 be heard calling at night. On one occasion, on I3th 
 October 1778, he notes that " near 40 ravens have 
 been playing about all day." Now he is making ex- 
 periments on the Common to discover if possible the 
 laws which regulated the strange phenomenon of echoes. 
 Now he is investigating a curious humming in the air 
 " to be heard distinctly the whole Common through/' 
 from the top of the Hanger to the avenue gate of Newton 
 Vicarage. Or he is interested in the subject of dew- 
 ponds, " one in particular on our sheep-down, 300 feet 
 above my house, which, though never above three feet 
 deep in the middle, has never yet been known to 
 fail." 
 
 It was by way of the Common too that Gilbert 
 White was wont to visit his particular friend, Richard 
 Yalden, vicar of Newton Valence. The roads were bad 
 in those days, and for six months in the year were 
 practically impassable for a carriage. Indeed in one 
 year it is noted as a rare circumstance that on i5th 
 March " a four-wheel'd post-chaise was brought to ye 
 door at this early time of year." People were depend- 
 ent for society on their near neighbours, and in this 
 respect White was fortunate. A close intimacy existed 
 between himself and the vicar of Selborne and Mr 
 Yalden, of Newton Valence. The friends are con- 
 stantly meeting, " drinking tea " or dining at each 
 other's houses. Mr Yalden was, moreover, connected 
 with White by marriage.
 
 ON SELBORNE COMMON 71 
 
 The house in which Yalden lived is still standing, 
 from the windows of which a most enchanting view 
 of the surrounding country, including Nore Hill, is 
 obtained. It is approached from the side of the 
 Common by an avenue of venerable Scotch firs, which 
 adds much to its picturesque appearance. Unlike 
 White's house at Selborne, it occupies high ground, and 
 in dry seasons there is sometimes a difficulty about 
 water. The only source of supply is a vast rain-water 
 tank, which, as we learn from Gilbert White's letters, 
 one winter gave out, and water had to be fetched from 
 the south side of Nore Hill. That Richard Yalden, like 
 his friend the Selborne naturalist, took an interest in 
 country pursuits is evident. When preaching not long 
 since in his beautiful old church a small Early English 
 building, exquisitely cared for in all respects I lighted 
 on a manuscript-diary and weather chart, in which the 
 good vicar, after the manner of Gilbert White, entered 
 daily the state of the weather. Sometimes more inter- 
 esting entries are made. Now Mr Yalden " drinks tea 
 with Mr White at the Wakes," now he dines there. 
 Once or twice an observation on natural history is 
 entered. He notes the hearing of a chiffchaff on Sel- 
 borne Common, and the cry of a stone-curlew. Like 
 Gilbert White, too, he is a painstaking parson and 
 cares for his people. We meet with a list of persons 
 residing at Newton, at Hawkley and at Greatham 
 respectively to whom he has given copies of a book 
 on the Sacrament that they may understand the rite 
 the better. 
 
 It was a great grief to Gilbert White when, in 1784, 
 the health of Mr Yalden began to fail, and many were 
 the walks across Selborne Common to inquire after his
 
 72 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 friend. He was, we learn, "ill, very ill," in the month 
 of June, and his general condition was " very bad " ; but 
 as the summer advanced he mended and talked much of 
 going out partridge-shooting over the glebe in September. 
 But the following winter was a long and trying one. 
 The great frost occurred when at Selborne White lost 
 all his " laurustines, bays, ilexes, arbutuses, cypresses, 
 and even his Portugal laurels and his fine sloping laurel 
 hedge were scorched up." The cold proved too much 
 for the ailing vicar, who passed away early in 1785, and 
 was buried within his church at Newton Valence, where 
 a tablet to his memory may be seen. It was some 
 consolation to our naturalist that his nephew, Edmund 
 White, succeeded Mr Yalden at the vicarage, where a 
 barometer adjusted by Gilbert White is still carefully 
 preserved. 
 
 On the verge of the Common, overlooking the village 
 of Selborne, a break in the beech-trees, now in the 
 splendour of their autumn colouring, reveals the house 
 where White lived, lying some three hundred feet below, 
 with the church just beyond it. The church tower is 
 mantled with Virginia creeper, which shows a bright 
 patch of crimson on the landscape. iJght years after 
 the death of Mr Yalden, White followed his friend to 
 the grave. But holding ' ' the custom of burying within 
 the body of the church" to be an improper one, he 
 was buried, in accordance with the instructions of his 
 will, "in the churchyard in as plain and private a 
 way as possible, without any pall-bearers or parade." 
 " Six honest day labouring men " carried him to his 
 grave on the north side of the chancel, to whom he 
 left " the sum of ten shillings each for their trouble." 
 Very peaceful did the village appear as I gazed upon
 
 ON SELBORNE COMMON 73 
 
 it from the Common. The calm autumnal weather 
 seemed to be an emblem of the naturalist's career. 
 He had spent nearly the whole of his long life at 
 Selborne "in gladness and singleness of heart." And 
 the stillness and beauty of the scene reflected the 
 serenity of his life.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE VERGE OF THE FOREST 
 
 IN olden times the New Forest extended from South- 
 ampton Water on the east to the River Avon on 
 the west, and from the shore of the Solent to the borders 
 of Wiltshire. Its area is now somewhat restricted, but 
 it still covers an extent of nearly a hundred thousand 
 acres. It may be that the strip of land adjacent to 
 Southampton Water was always more or less under 
 cultivation, and therefore outside the strict boundaries 
 of the Forest. At any rate there is at Fawley, near to 
 Calshot Castle, an ancient church showing fine Norman 
 features, and another at Dibden, overlooking South- 
 ampton Water, possessing a Norman font ; and it seems 
 likely that these churches served the spiritual needs of 
 the population that occupied this strip of territory from 
 Norman times. 
 
 Very attractive to the naturalist is this long, narrow 
 stretch of partly cultivated land lying between the 
 shore of Southampton Water and the trees and moor- 
 land of the Forest. The student of English literature 
 will doubtless call to mind that it was this well-wooded 
 district as viewed from the town of Southampton, across 
 the "narrow sea" or "swelling flood," that inspired 
 the fine hymn of the good Nonconformist, Isaac Watts, 
 in the year 1709, "There is a land of pure delight." 
 From a botanical and ornithological standpoint its 
 
 74
 
 THE VERGE OF THE FOREST 75 
 
 interest is difficult to exaggerate. This is, no doubt, 
 partly due to the varied nature of its soil and scenery. 
 The shore is not only the haunt of many sea-fowl, but 
 it supports a flora of its own. The copses which come 
 down to the water's edge are ah' ve in spring and summer- 
 time with numbers of our smaller birds. The bogs 
 creeping between the plantations of larch and fir are 
 rich in moorland plants, while the banks of the deep 
 lanes which run between the farms and homesteads are 
 clothed with a profusion of ferns and wild flowers. 
 
 If it be true, as a mediaeval saint used to say, " Ubi 
 aves, ibi angeli," then the churchyard of Dibden must 
 be haunted by legions of angels. It is a veritable para- 
 dise of birds. A quieter and more secluded spot could 
 not well be imagined. Approached by a deep and 
 hollow lane, it is surrounded by forest trees. Save for 
 the ancient manor house immediately to the north of 
 it, the church stands in solitary isolation, overlooking 
 Southampton Water. As I rested beneath an aged oak 
 which stands in the middle of the churchyard a green 
 woodpecker alighted on the tree and, careless of my 
 presence, began to run up the massive trunk. At that 
 moment a bird's note, which could only be that of the 
 red-backed shrike or butcher-bird, arrested my atten- 
 tion. Almost at once I caught sight of three speckled 
 fledgelings, with the characteristic dark band across 
 their eyes, sitting close together on the low branch of 
 an elm-tree some twenty yards distant. It was most 
 interesting watching through a pair of field-glasses the 
 parent butcher-birds feeding their young with grubs 
 and beetles. It was the time of fledgelings, and Dibden 
 churchyard had clearly provided shelter for a large 
 number of nests. Several young robins and green-
 
 76 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 finches continued to call from a hawthorn bush, and a 
 fly-catcher never ceased its activities from the top of a 
 broken tombstone. 
 
 Towards sundown I wandered past a copse illumin- 
 ated with wild roses and foxgloves to the open moorland 
 beyond, where my presence gravely disturbed several 
 pairs of redshanks. Their slightly built nests were 
 evidently hidden somewhere in the desolate swamps. 
 With wild cries and gesticulations they threw themselves 
 about in the evening air, hoping to draw away the 
 intruder of their solitudes. Their shrill notes of alarm 
 disturbed the peewits, or green plovers, whose doleful 
 wail, like unto the cry of a lost soul, added to the weird- 
 ness of the situation. After a while a company of wild- 
 duck, with outstretched necks and regulated flight, 
 passed overhead in the direction of Beaulieu Abbey. 
 As the twilight deepened the " whir " of the nightjar 
 or goat-sucker became more audible, and now and again 
 the strange bird would be seen making a rapid flight into 
 the air in quest of some moth or insect, and again 
 dropping down into the seclusion of the gorse and 
 heather. 
 
 But if the verge of the Forest is full of interest to the 
 lover of birds, it is no less so to the botanist. The shore 
 of Southampton Water is the home of many choice 
 species. It is the chief locality in England for the 
 many-spiked cord-grass, or Spartina alterniflora, which 
 found its way over from America at the beginning of the 
 last century, and has now completely established itself. 
 It is a stout and withal a useful grass. Many sheds and 
 outhouses and even cottages in the neighbourhood of 
 Hythe and Dibden may be seen thatched with it instead 
 of straw. All along the shore characteristic seaside
 
 THE VERGE OF THE FOREST 77 
 
 species may be found. The sea-beet grows in abund- 
 ance, and the sea-campion, the sea-milkwort, scurvy 
 grass and the frosted orache ; while on the shingly spit 
 where stands Calshot Castle, built by Henry VIII. with 
 stones from Netley and lead from Beaulieu Abbey, 
 some rarer plants flourish. The Portland-spurge grows 
 there, its only habitat in the county of Hants, and in 
 vast abundance the wild seakale. Indeed so plentiful 
 is the seakale that in former years the coastguards and 
 fishermen were wont to blanch the young shoots by 
 covering them up with sand and shingle and to send 
 them to the Southampton market. And, curious to 
 relate, abundant as the plant is at Calshot Spit, it will 
 be seen nowhere else, except sporadically, and that very 
 seldom, along the Hampshire shore. 
 
 In summer-time the moorland is most attractive. 
 The curious, carnivorous sundews, both the long-leaved 
 and the round-leaved species, are abundant, and in 
 places their rarer relative, the Droscra anglica, Huds. 
 may be found. The lovely little marsh St John's wort 
 and the equally lovely creeping-pimpernel are every- 
 where, while the upright yellow spikes of the bog 
 asphodel appear like candles or torches over the swamps 
 and the tiny white flags of the cotton-grass wave gently 
 in the breeze. This is where the sphagnum moss is 
 found, gathered in large quantities during the war to 
 make compresses and bandages for our wounded soldiers. 
 Scattered all over the moorland the solitary purple 
 flowers of the strangely named " meadow-thistle " will 
 be seen, and spikes of the spotted orchis ; while here 
 and there the marsh club-moss, or lycopodium, may be 
 noticed creeping over the black soil. But the chief 
 glory of Dibden Bottom is the Calathian violet, or
 
 78 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 marsh gentian (Gentiana Pneumonanthe, L.). Its large, 
 bell-shaped, deep blue flowers, striped with green, are 
 among the most beautiful and showy blossoms of the 
 British flora. It is a rare plant too, though often 
 abundant where it occurs. It flowers in August, and 
 such a splendid pageant does it present as to suggest 
 a Swiss pasture rather than an English moor. As an 
 illustration of its attractive beauty it may be recalled 
 that a few years since an Oxford scholar, whose classical 
 attainments are only equalled by his love of botany, 
 actually purchased a stretch of moorland because it 
 possessed a colony of the marsh gentian. 
 
 In a leafy glade not far from Dibden Bottom an 
 encampment of gipsies may mostly be seen. It must 
 be allowed that these nomads add considerably to the 
 picturesqueness of the Forest. A cluster of brown, 
 tattered tents, an iron kettle suspended over a wood 
 fire, the smoke of which curls up leisurely among the 
 trees, the rough ponies and donkeys tethered hard by, 
 the half-naked children, the strapping women moving 
 about with the air and dignity of queens, the tall, 
 loafing men, with their brightly coloured neck-cloths 
 and well-seasoned pipes, reclining carelessly on the 
 ground present a picture of peaceful happiness such 
 as town-dwellers might well envy. But life for the 
 gipsies is not what it was in former times. Since the 
 deer in the Forest have been destroyed their lot is a far 
 harder one. They have now to be contented with a 
 stray fowl for dinner, or a young rabbit, or it may be 
 with a hedgehog baked whole in a coat of clay, and with 
 such provisions as a village shop can supply. 
 
 A Forest stream, red with iron deposits, runs past the 
 gipsy encampment and gives a sense of coolness on the
 
 THE VERGE OF THE FOREST 79 
 
 hottest day in summer. The banks of the stream are 
 clothed with ferns of the tenderest green both the 
 male and the female fern, the long, ribbon-like fronds 
 of the hart's-tongue, the hard-fern and the sweet- 
 scented mountain-fern. Tall foxgloves are everywhere, 
 and present a fine contrast with their splendid spikes of 
 purple flowers to the soft, delicate green of the filices. 
 Here, as elsewhere on the verge of the Forest, the tap- 
 ping of the woodpecker may be heard, and perhaps the 
 jarring notes of a jay as the handsome bird leaves the 
 shelter of a holly bush.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE NEW FOREST FLORA 
 
 IT is not surprising that the flora of the New Forest 
 is a rich one. The large extent of its area, much 
 of it untouched and unenclosed since the days of William 
 the Conqueror, the diversity of its natural conditions 
 the shore of the Solent and of Southampton Water, the 
 extensive woodlands, the wide tracts of open heath, 
 the streams and water-courses, the spacious bogs and 
 swamps afford ample and suitable shelter to the 
 various orders of British plants. 
 
 The geological formations of the Forest somewhat 
 diminish, it is true, its wealth of wild flowers in com- 
 parison with the adjoining districts. There is no chalk 
 in the Forest, and consequently the chalk flora, so 
 abundant in parts of Hampshire and in Wiltshire and 
 Dorset, is almost entirely wanting. Although the yew 
 appears to be indigenous, yet most of the chalk-loving 
 species are absent. The wild Clematis or traveller's joy 
 is seldom seen ; the bee-orchis, so characteristic of the 
 chalk downs, is unknown ; so are the fly, the rare green- 
 man (Acer as) and the dwarf orchids. We might per- 
 haps have expected to find in some of the hollows of 
 the Forest the dwale or deadly nightshade, but this, too, 
 is wanting, and we shall seek in vain for such attractive 
 woodland species as the herb-paris and the fragrant 
 mezereum. 
 
 80
 
 THE NEW FOREST FLORA 8t 
 
 Still other choice plants more than counterbalance 
 these omissions. On the crumbling walls of Beaulieu 
 Abbey, founded by the worst of English kings in conse- 
 quence of a terrifying dream, the wild hyssop and the 
 pink, Dianthus plumarius, L., the parent of our garden 
 species, still flourish, as when in mediaeval times the 
 Cistercian monks moved about their sacred precincts. 
 In the deeper glades of the Forest the torch-like spikes 
 of the foxglove and the wild purple columbine and the 
 exquisite bastard-balm light up the shadowy gloom. 
 The bogs are fragrant with the sweet Dutch myrtle 
 and illuminated with the golden asphodel. On the 
 road-sides the turf is brightened with the star-like 
 blossoms of the humble tormentil and " the little 
 speedwell's darling blue." Along the shallow margin 
 of Sowley Pond, and elsewhere in the Forest, the rare 
 frogs'-bit opens its white crumpled petals, and the 
 stately spearwort rears its noble head. 
 
 But besides the large number of species which we 
 should naturally expect to find in so extensive and 
 diversified a district, the forest is also " the home of 
 some of England's greatest rarities." Some of these 
 have only been discovered within recent years, since 
 about the middle of the last century, but others were 
 known to " the fathers of English botany." 
 
 One of the most striking and interesting of these 
 rarities is the blue cowslip, or narrow-leaved lungwort, 
 known to botanists as Pulmonaria officinalis, L. It 
 was discovered by one Mr John Goodyer, who " on 
 May 25, anno 1620, saw it flouring in a wood by 
 Holbury house in the New Forrest in Hantshire." 
 This is the earliest record of the plant, and occurs in 
 the second edition of Gerard's Herball, published in 1633. 
 f
 
 82 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 The finding of this beautiful and attractive species 
 clearly made a deep impression on the minds of the 
 early botanists, for one after another Thomas Johnson, 
 Will Cole, Christopher Merrett, John Ray dwell on 
 Goodyer's discovery. The plant is unknown in 
 England except in the New Forest and in the Isle of 
 Wight, and very sparingly in one or two other localities. 
 In the neighbourhood of Beaulieu Abbey, especially in 
 the woods and copses that skirt the river, it is common, 
 and must often in early spring have attracted the notice 
 of the good monks, who doubtless made use of it in 
 medicinal preparations. It is curious to notice how 
 the flower changes colour in the course of its career. In 
 bud it is of a reddish hue ; as the petals open they be- 
 come violet, then ultramarine blue, and at length fade 
 slowly into a dull purple. The plant has been variously 
 named, but the early botanists mostly call it the bugloss- 
 cowslip or the long-leaved sage of Jerusalem. How 
 the name " Jerusalem " came to be connected with the 
 plant is unknown, but it evidently had some sacred 
 associations, and the children of the New Forest call it 
 to this day " Joseph and Mary." Its other name, lung- 
 wort (Pulmonaria), had reference, of course, to its use 
 in herbalism, the spotted leaves of the plant being, 
 according to the accepted " doctrine of signatures," 
 a clear indication of its purpose in the divine 
 economy. 
 
 Another rare Forest plant is the stately Gladiolus, 
 illyricus, Koch, only discovered in the year 1856, and 
 found nowhere else in England. Its tall and graceful 
 scapes of purple flowers shoot up among the thick 
 bracken in several glades of the Forest about the middle 
 of July. Authorities differ as to the claims of the
 
 THE NEW FOREST FLORA 83 
 
 species to be regarded as a native plant. It is certainly 
 strange that so arresting and conspicuous a flower 
 should have escaped notice up to the middle of the last 
 century, and since in one locality it is found in close 
 proximity to rhododendrons, it has been suggested by 
 an eminent authority that " all the spots might be con- 
 nected with planted trees or shrubs." It is, however, 
 scattered here and there over a wide area of the Forest, 
 often in entirely natural surroundings ; and, moreover, 
 a few specimens of the plant were discovered some years 
 ago, in similar situations, on Lake Common in the Isle of 
 Wight. 
 
 But whatever doubts may exist as to the indigenous 
 nature of Gladiolus, none rests on the marsh Ludwigia, 
 one of the rarest of British plants, and as humble and 
 retiring as the former is conspicuous and grand. It 
 was first found in England by our friend, Mr Goodyer, 
 growing along the course of a tiny stream on " the Moor 
 at Petersfield," where it continued to exist until the 
 year 1848, when owing to drainage operations it en- 
 tirely disappeared. Five years, however, before this 
 unfortunate catastrophe, the plant was discovered in 
 some swampy ground between Brockenhurst and Lynd- 
 hurst. Since then it has been found in other parts of 
 the Forest, now its only habitat in England. It is very 
 difficult to detect, especially in dry seasons, and I must 
 confess that I have never succeeded in finding it, but, to 
 quote the words of a more fortunate botanist, " it is 
 assuredly a beautiful though not a showy plant ; the 
 lucid, transparent green of its leaves, harmoniously 
 blending with suffusions of the richest olive brown and 
 bright red veined with crimson, can hardly find a 
 parallel in any other indigenous species of our land."
 
 84 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Close to the swamp where the Ludwigia dwelt an 
 exceedingly rare and local grass, the European cut -grass 
 (Leersia ovyzoides, Sw.), was found by Dr Bromfield, 
 the distinguished botanist, in 1849. He afterwards 
 detected it all along the Boldre river, for nearly three 
 miles above and below Brockenhurst, where it still 
 flourishes. 
 
 But by far the most interesting rarity in the New 
 Forest is the truly beautiful orchid Spiranthes cestivalis, 
 Rich., or summer lady's-tresses. It was first discovered 
 in July, 1840, on a tract of sphagnous bog between 
 Lyndhurst and Christchurch. The honour of the dis- 
 covery seems to belong to a Mr Joseph Janson, who 
 sent specimens of the plant to the British Museum. 
 The species was then new to England, although it has 
 since been found in Wyre Forest, in the county of 
 Worcester. In appearance, both as regards the spiral 
 arrangement of its white flowers and in general habit, 
 the plant proclaims its relationship to the autumnal 
 lady's-tresses, so plentiful in places on the Hampshire 
 Downs, but it is larger and taller. It is satisfactory 
 to know that this rare species of British orchid still 
 flourishes in the very swamp where Mr Janson first, 
 found it in the summer of 1840. I myself saw it there 
 a few seasons ago, and the occasion was one not lightly 
 to be forgotten. The swamp is a spacious one, where 
 sweet gale, sundew, asphodel, cotton-grass and other 
 species grow in abundance. After wading about for 
 some little while in the soft and spongy bog I spied 
 ahead of me a slender spike of pure white blossoms 
 rising from a cushion of green sphagnous moss. Surely 
 it was the long-sought treasure. Splashing towards 
 the spot, I eagerly examined the lovely plant. It was
 
 THE NEW FOREST FLORA 85 
 
 without doubt Spiranthes eestivalis. A further search 
 revealed a number of isolated plants scattered here and 
 there throughout the swamp. My happiness was in 
 proportion to my good fortune. It was a notable day 
 in my botanical experience. 
 
 The existence of these five plants alone the blue cow- 
 slip, the Gladiolus, the Ludwigia, the cut-grass and the 
 Spiranthes would abundantly justify the assertion 
 that the New Forest is " the home of some of England's 
 greatest rarities." And these species by no means 
 exhaust the wealth of the district. We have already 
 noticed others which would give distinction to any 
 neighbourhood. There is perhaps no area of equal size 
 in Great Britain which yields in its shady glades, its 
 open heathlands, its grassy rides and borders of planta- 
 tions, its wide stretches of wet turf and marshy swamp, 
 so rich a harvest of choice and attractive species.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ST ALDHELM'S HEAD 
 
 THERE are few finer stretches of coast-line, at 
 least in the south of England, than that which 
 lies between Peverel Point and St Aldhelm's Head, in 
 the Isle of Purbeck. The splendid cliffs, of varying 
 hues and colours, descend for the most part sheer into 
 the sea, forming a mighty bastion of rock, on the ledges 
 and in the crevices of which the sea-fowl breed in multi- 
 tudes. From the remote ages of antiquity these lonely 
 cliffs have been their breeding-places, and there, too, 
 many rare plants find a secure and congenial home, 
 forming here and there veritable rock-gardens on the 
 face of the perpendicular walls. 
 
 The downs above are scarred and scored with numbers 
 of little stone quarries. Some of them were worked as 
 far back as the time of the Romans. Indeed, they have 
 given to the Isle of Purbeck a justly deserved reputation. 
 William Camden, who died in the year 1623, tells us in 
 his Britannia that " the Isle of Purbeck, which is full 
 of heath and forests, well stocked with fallow deer and 
 stags, has under ground, here and there, veins of marble 
 and many sorts of good stone, from which (as tradition 
 informs us) the Cathedral Church of Salisbury was 
 supply'd ; and large quantities thereof are carried to 
 London, with great advantage of the inhabitants." 
 And not Salisbury Cathedral only, but Winchester 
 
 86
 
 ST ALDHELM'S HEAD 87 
 
 Cathedral likewise, and Romsey Abbey, and the 
 Temple Church in London, and many another stately 
 shrine. Indeed, as Sir Frederick Treves truly says : 
 " There can hardly be a cathedral in the south of 
 England, or a self-respecting church, castle, or manor 
 house, that owes not some beauty in mason's work to 
 ' Purbeck marble ' shipped from Swanage." Many, 
 too, of the mediaeval marble effigies, which add so 
 much to the beauty and interest of our churches, were 
 executed in marble from the Isle of Purbeck. So with 
 the coarser strata. The stone was used abundantly in 
 the rebuilding of London after the fire of 1666, especi- 
 ally in the erection of St Paul's Cathedral, and until 
 quite recent years was largely employed in paving 
 streets and courtyards. 
 
 In olden times the lonely line of cliffs between 
 Durlston Head and St Aldhelm's was the haunt of many 
 a rare bird now, alas ! extinct, or almost so, in the 
 south of England. Among these must be reckoned the 
 raven, the chough and the peregrine falcon. Forty 
 years ago the raven was not an uncommon bird in the 
 Isle of Purbeck. It built regularly on the white chalk 
 cliffs above Studland and on the magnificent headland 
 of St Aldhelm's. For centuries, too, it had bred at 
 Corfe Castle. In an old manuscript diary, under date 
 1638, when the stronghold stood in all its glory, we find 
 the following entry : " Raven bred in Corfe Castell at 
 Christmas and did kill yonge lambs to feed 5 younge 
 ones w'h he had ; W. Brown ye keeper did kill yose 5 
 younge Ravenes." As late as 1857 the ravens con- 
 tinued to haunt the ruins, in which year they brought 
 off their young in the " ivy-tower," and some seasons 
 later they nested in safety at St Aldhelm's Head.
 
 88 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Indeed, until quite lately their hoarse croak might be 
 heard, above the sound of the waves, as they tumbled 
 about after their manner in the air, or made their way 
 along the coast-line between Lulworth and Tilly Whim. 
 Everyone will remember Shakespeare's famous lines 
 in King Lear on the white chalk cliffs of Dover, where 
 
 " Half-way down 
 Hangs one that gathers samphire " ; 
 
 and where 
 
 "The choughs that wing the midway air 
 Show scarce so gross as beetles." 
 
 The red-legged chough, common enough in Shake- 
 speare's time, is now almost extinct in England. Up 
 till the middle of the last century it was fairly plentiful 
 on the Purbeck coast, where it used to breed at St Aid- 
 helm's Head. But, like the raven, it has fallen a victim 
 to persecution ; and the attractive sight of a company 
 of choughs sailing along Seacombe Cliffs will now be 
 sought in vain. But if the chough has disappeared, its 
 near relative, the jackdaw, has enormously increased, 
 and multitudes of these birds now frequent the Purbeck 
 coast. Indeed it is not unlikely that the presence of 
 the daw in such numbers has helped towards the exter- 
 mination of its rarer relation by taking possession of the 
 latter's nesting-places along the cliffs. Among the 
 hawks the kestrel maintains its position in Purbeck Isle. 
 It breeds in many places along the coast, and most 
 seasons there is a nest in the ruins of Corfe Castle. 
 Formerly the peregrine falcon was not uncommon, and 
 one or more of tjiese noble birds might always be seen 
 along the cliffs. Now, as in the Isle of Wight, it has
 
 ST ALDHELM'S HEAD 89 
 
 become very rare, and its ancient eyrie at Durlston 
 Head is untenanted. 
 
 But if civilisation has been hostile to such species as 
 the raven, the chough and the peregrine, it has in no 
 wise interfered with the vast number of sea-fowl which 
 frequent the coast every spring. Except on the per- 
 pendicular chalk cliffs of Freshwater, there is perhaps 
 no spot in the south of England where sea-fowl breed 
 in such numbers as on the oolite cliffs of Purbeck. The 
 puffins are usually the first to appear, coming in from 
 the sea, almost to a day, during the last week in March. 
 They are quickly followed by the razor-bills and guille- 
 mots. In greater numbers still the herring-gulls con- 
 gregate on the cliffs, occupying every available ledge 
 and cranny. A wonderful sight it is to pass in a little 
 boat beneath the long line of perpendicular rocks, and 
 to watch the wild-fowl gulls and puffins and razor- 
 bills and guillemots, and it may be a colony of cormor- 
 ants or a pair of glossy green-black shags as they sit 
 in myriads on the ledges, or break forth from the face of 
 the cliff with loud and frightened cries. 
 
 As would not unnaturally be expected, a number of 
 rare and interesting plants flourish out of harm's way 
 on the magnificent rocks which guard the coast of Pur- 
 beck. Formerly the wild sea-cabbage, the parent of 
 our cutlivated garden varieties, was plentiful, and may 
 still be seen in several places ; but for some unknown 
 reason it has become scarcer on the Dorset coast, as in 
 many other parts of England. A relative of the sea- 
 cabbage, known as black-mustard, is, however, abund- 
 ant, and is the characteristic plant on the sloping cliffs 
 of Durlston Bay, where, with teazle and burdock, with 
 ox-tongue and hound's-tongue, with wood-sage and
 
 90 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 perfoliate yellow-wort, it makes a fine show in spring 
 and summer-time. But perhaps the choicest spot along 
 the coast, where sea-plants can be seen in their most 
 attractive surroundings, is in the immediate vicinity of 
 the famous Tilly Whim caves. The caves themselves 
 are disused quarries, and apart from their interest as 
 old workings, and as the haunt of smugglers in after- 
 times, they appeal to the botanist in several respects. 
 More than one clump of the increasingly rare and charm- 
 ing fern, Asplenium marinum, L., or the sea spleenwort, 
 continues to flourish in inaccessible positions ; and the 
 pellitory-of-the-wall, common enough on old ruins and 
 castles, may here be seen in its natural surroundings, 
 growing abundantly on its native rocks. On the per- 
 pendicular cliffs hard by other striking plants blossom. 
 The samphire (Crithmum maritimum, L.) grows in pro- 
 fusion, and in days when the succulent plant was 
 accounted a delicacy was doubtless gathered by the 
 hardy fishermen and sent up in barrels to London. The 
 business " horrid trade," as Shakespeare terms it, be- 
 cause of the danger attendant upon gathering the plant 
 was a fairly lucrative one as late as the middle of the 
 last century, when the plant fetched four or five shillings 
 a bushel. With the samphire on the cliffs of Tilly 
 Whim also grows the rare Inula crithmoides, L., or 
 golden samphire, which, while bearing in part the same 
 English name, is yet of an entirely different order of 
 British plants. It has succulent leaves, it is true, and 
 has sometimes been used as a substitute for the true 
 samphire, but it belongs to the order of Composite 
 plants, and is a stately and upright species, with heads 
 of golden-yellow flowers. It sometimes thrives, as in 
 my old parish of Porchester, on the seashore, but at
 
 ST ALDHELM'S HEAD 91 
 
 Tilly Whim it is a rock-plant, and very striking does it 
 appear growing in clusters on the face of the perpen- 
 dicular cliffs. Other interesting species keep the sam- 
 phires company. Large cushions of the beautiful rose- 
 coloured thrift and of the white sea-campion maintain 
 a hold on the rocks, together with dense masses of the 
 sea-beet, or wild spinach, as the fishermen call it, and 
 lusty plants clothed with long hairs of the sea-carrot. 
 Dwarf specimens, due, doubtless, to the exposed situa- 
 tion, of the ploughman's spikenard appear very attrac- 
 tive on the rocks, and a white-flowered variety of the 
 sea sand-spurry and a scarce form of the exquisite sea- 
 lavender which can hardly fail to attract attention. 
 
 On the lonely height known as St Aldhelm's Head 
 stands, 450 feet above the sea, a little Norman chapel, 
 dedicated to the famous Bishop of Sherborne, and dat- 
 ing back to the twelfth century. It is a low, square 
 structure, built entirely of stone and lighted only by- 
 one small, narrow window-slit in the east wall. Up to 
 the time of the Reformation the tiny chapel it only 
 measures 32 feet square was served by a chaplain, who 
 also attended to the beacon light on the roof. As one 
 stands by the Norman doorway it is impossible not to be 
 conscious of the romance and sublimity of the situation. 
 A magnificent prospect of the Dorset coast presents 
 itself from the Anvil Lighthouse on the east to the Isle 
 of Portland in the dim distance on the west. No trees 
 interrupt the vision. There is only sky and sea and 
 downland, and a sense of infinity. And here, in spring- 
 time, there comes up a rare orchid which loves to 
 flourish on the oolite formation of the Isle of Purbeck. 
 It is the spider-orchis, and every May it puts forth its 
 curious blooms, as it doubtless did before the chapel of
 
 92 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 St Aldhelm was erected. It will be sought for in vain 
 elsewhere in Dorset, or in the adjoining counties, but 
 here, in the vicinity of the Norman chapel, and among 
 the Purbeck marble quarries towards Durlston Head, 
 it has made its home. When the spider-orchis is past 
 its prime, it is succeeded by the bee-orchis and the 
 pyramidal orchis, and when these two are gone, and the 
 summer is drawing to a close, and the wheat ears are 
 collecting on the downs, then the delicate Spiranthes 
 autumnalis, Rich., known as lady's-tresses, will make 
 its appearance. Last autumn, as I stood on the turf 
 beside St Aldhelm 's Chapel, it was scattered over the 
 downs, as if to cheer with its exquisite spiral blossoms 
 the departing summer.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SHINGLE VEGETATION OF THE SUFFOLK SHORE 
 
 THE most remarkable feature of the Suffolk coast 
 which stretches for some fifty miles from Land- 
 guard Point at the mouth of the Orwell to the denes 
 of Lowestoft is the vast accumulation of shingle 
 which in places guards the shore. Not only is there 
 the famous " shelf " running between Aldeburgh and 
 the North Vere, which for twelve miles or more separ- 
 ates the river from the sea, and which, except for a 
 coastguard station and the Orford lighthouse, is desti- 
 tute of any habitation, but at Baudsey Ferry, at Shingle 
 Street, where the black-boarded, red-tiled fishermen's 
 cottages are entirely surrounded by shingle, at Walbers- 
 wick, at Easton and Benacre, considerable stretches of 
 shingle may be seen. Here and there, it is true, the 
 shingle gives way to sand-dunes ; and at Felixstowe, 
 Dunwich, Southwold and again between Kessingland 
 and Lowestoft some low-lying sandy cliffs the haunt 
 of myriads of sand-martins in summer-time are met 
 with ; yet on the whole the shingle may fairly be re- 
 garded as the characteristic feature of the Suffolk shore. 
 It would seem to be almost impossible that any vege- 
 tation could manage to exist on the bare surface of the 
 shingle beach ; and yet the shingle, like the sand-dunes 
 and the meal-marshes, has a distinct flora of its own. 
 It is not a rich flora, if richness be reckoned according 
 
 93
 
 94 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 to the number of species, but it can boast of several 
 plants of unusual interest and beauty. Indeed, one of 
 the most striking plants in the British flora loves to put 
 forth its delicate blossoms on the naked shingle. There 
 is perhaps no more beautiful wild flower than the 
 yellow horned-poppy, with its hoary foliage and large, 
 delicate petals and " long huskes or cods, crooked like 
 an home or cornet," which may be found more or less 
 along the Suffolk shore. I was struck with its abund- 
 ance in certain places. At Slaughden Quay sacred to 
 the memory of George Crabbe where a small cluster of 
 dilapidated cottages occupy the pebble beach, the plant 
 was making a brave show. Several of the fishermen's 
 houses are in ruins and, half buried in the shingle, bore 
 witness to the fury of the storms ; but on the very crest 
 of the naked ridge the flowers were blooming in profu- 
 sion. In still more lavish abundance did I find the 
 yellow horned-poppy on the wide stretch of sand and 
 shingle between Benacre Broad and the sea. At one 
 spot, some forty yards or more in length, there was a 
 thick jungle of this beautiful plant, while close by were 
 several fine patches of the pale purple sea-rocket in 
 full flower on the bare stones. 
 
 Another choice species of shingle vegetation is the 
 rare and handsome sea-pea (L. maritimus, Big.). It 
 is a local plant, to be found only in a few counties of 
 Great Britain, where its chief habitat is the Chesil 
 Beach, in Dorset, and on the shingle of the Suffolk 
 coast. The fact of its flourishing on the barren " beach, 
 where nether grew grasse, nor any earth was ever seen," 
 excited much curiosity in early days and when, at a 
 time of grievous dearth in the reign of Queen Mary, a 
 great quantity of this " peason was discovered by the
 
 SHINGLE VEGETATION OF SUFFOLK SHORE 95 
 
 seaside all of hard stone and pibble, called in those parts 
 a shelfe, lying betweene the townes of Orford and Aid- 
 borough, whereof the poore people gathered above an 
 hundred quarters," we learn from Stowe's Chronicle 
 that all men counted it for a miracle. The " miracle " 
 has not yet exhausted itself. On the dreary " shelfe " 
 of shingle towards Orford lighthouse the sea-pease or 
 peason, as the old writers call it, still flourishes as in the 
 sixteenth century, and in many places along the shore 
 the dull grey surface of the pebble beach is relieved by 
 bright patches of this beautiful plant. I have also met 
 with it at Felixstowe, at Shingle Street, at Aldeburgh, 
 where Crabbe gathered specimens for his herbarium, 
 and on several spots between Dunwich and Walbers- 
 wick. 
 
 This last stretch of seashore produces several inter- 
 esting species of shingle vegetation. A wide belt of 
 pebbles, in places mingled with sand, separates the sea 
 from the Westwood marshes. On this exposed ridge, 
 some four miles in length, the haunt of the ringed plover 
 and the lesser tern, a large number of plants flourish. 
 The yellow horned-poppy is again strongly in evidence, 
 though not in such abundance as on Benacre denes. 
 With it will be seen tall, red spikes of rumex, large com- 
 pact cushions of the pink sea-mil kwort, and spreading 
 tangles of sea-beet. The dainty sea-campion is plen- 
 tiful in places, especially towards Walberswick, and all 
 along the beach are scattered plants of the uncommon 
 clammy Senecio (S. viscosus, L.), an unattractive 
 species but interesting on account of its rarity, and 
 one characteristic of the Suffolk shore. Where sand 
 mixes with the shingle the beautiful sea-holly is 
 plentiful, with yellow sedum, and rest-harrow, and
 
 96 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 hare's-foot trefoil, and various kinds of maritime 
 grasses. In several places the great yellow ragwort 
 was very conspicuous, and I also noticed plants of the 
 rose-coloured willow-herb and of the exquisite sky-blue 
 chicory. Strange to say, there was one clump of the 
 true samphire (Crithmum maritimum, L.) growing on 
 the shingle. This aromatic plant, which yields the well- 
 known condiment, is usually found on sea-cliffs, as at 
 Dover and at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, but in the 
 only two places where it is to be seen in Suffolk it 
 flourishes on the bare pebbly beach. So with the 
 reflexed stonecrop, usually associated with rocks, or 
 ancient ruins, as at Walberswick and Covehithe, but in 
 several places along the coast it carpets the shingle with 
 its bright and handsome yellow flowers. 
 
 An old writer speaks of the seakale or colewort as 
 " growing naturally upon the baych and brims of the 
 sea, where there is no earth to be seen, but sand and 
 rolling pibble stones," and another mentions that 
 " very good Coleworts come up yearly out of the stony 
 heaps " along the Suffolk shore. The plant has now 
 become very rare in Suffolk, and the county Flora even 
 states that it is " believed to be extinct," but I found 
 several plants between Dunwich and Walsberwick a 
 few summers ago. The sea-spurge (E. Paralias, L.) 
 may also be seen springing up out of the shingle in 
 luxuriant profusion. It sometimes even assumes the 
 size of a small bush, and I counted as many as thirty 
 stems rising from a single root. In the olden times the 
 family of spurge or " Tithymale " played an important 
 part in domestic medicine, and the " strongest kinde of 
 Tithymale and o-f greatest force is," we learn, " that of 
 the sea." In confirmation whereof John Gerard the
 
 SHINGLE VEGETATION OF SUFFOLK SHORE 97 
 
 herbalist relates his personal experience. " Some," 
 he says, " write by report of others, that it enflameth 
 exceedingly, but my selfe speak by experience ; for 
 walking along the sea coast at Lee in Essex, with a 
 Gentleman called Mr Rich, dwelling in the same towne, 
 I tooke but one drop of it into my mouth ; which 
 neverthelesse did so inflame and swell in my throte 
 that I hardly escaped with my life. And in like case 
 was the Gentleman, which caused us to take our horses, 
 and poste for our lives unto the next farme house to 
 drinke some milke to quench the extremitie of our heat, 
 which then ceased." 
 
 In former years other and rarer plants were occasion- 
 ally to be found on the pebbles of the shore, and among 
 the extinct plants of Great Britain must be included 
 one or two members of our scanty shingle vegetation. 
 A creeping vetch (V. Icevigata, Sm.), with solitary pale 
 blue flowers, a near relative to the yellow Vicia lutea, 
 L., which I found blooming plentifully among the 
 pebbles at Landguard Point, formerly grew on the long 
 belt of shingle between Weymouth and Abbotsbury, 
 but the plant has been lost for many years. The same 
 is perhaps true of Diotis maritima, Cass., the sea 
 cotton-seed or cudweed. At the beginning of the last 
 century George Crabbe found it on the long beach of 
 stones near the Orford lighthouse. Formerly this 
 choice plant, " growing much about a handful high, 
 with leaves thicke upon the stalkes, very white, soft, 
 and woolly," was to be seen on various parts of the 
 coast. Ray found it in several places on the coast of 
 Wales; it was recorded from the Isle of Wight, and 
 Gerard saw it " growing at a place called Merezey, six 
 miles from Colchester, neere unto the sea side." It has
 
 98 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 now disappeared from all these localities and must, it is 
 feared, be included among our extinct, or nearly extinct, 
 species. Still, with such striking plants as the sea- 
 poppy, the seakale or colewort, the sea-spurge, and 
 the sea-pea and, it may be added, the sea-holly, which, 
 while more at home on the sand-dunes, does not dis- 
 dain the pebbles of the beach, the members of our 
 shingle flora need not fear comparison with species that 
 favour more sheltered situations.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SUFFOLK SAND-DUNES 
 
 VAST stretches of shingle constitute, as we have 
 seen, the main feature of the Suffolk shore, but 
 in places the shingle gives way to sand-dunes, which are 
 often the only barrier between the marshes and the sea. 
 Between Thorpe and Sizewell Gap, associated, as Fitz- 
 Gerald tells us, with tales of smuggling and heroism in 
 the brave days of old, and onwards past Sluice to the 
 crumbling cliffs of Dunwich, and again at Covehithe 
 and Benacre, lines of low sandhills fringed with hoary 
 marram-grass, and bright here and there with the 
 beautiful striped flowers of the sea-convolvulus, pro- 
 tect the lowlands from the tide. 
 
 Among the characteristic plants of the Suffolk sand- 
 dunes the marram-grass and the creeping Carex aren- 
 aria, L., occupy, as under similar conditions elsewhere, 
 a conspicuous position. Indeed, if it were not for these 
 useful species, with their long subterranean rhizomes, 
 which bind the shifting sands together, the dunes would 
 never withstand the violence of the winds and waves. 
 Beneath the kindly shelter of the marram-grass other 
 and more interesting species contrive to maintain a 
 flourishing existence. As one wanders along the 
 Suffolk shore from Sluice to the little hamlet of Thorpe, 
 some two miles north of Aldeburgh, where the shelf of 
 shingle begins, a good idea of the flora of the sand-dunes 
 
 99
 
 ioo THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 may be obtained. All along the way numbers of the 
 lesser tern or sea-swallow will be heard crying overhead 
 or seen descending with a sudden dip into the waves ; 
 little companies of ringed plover flit with rapid flight 
 along the shore ; wheatears and shore-pipits are busy 
 among the bents and marram-grass, while the wailing 
 cry of the peewit is heard from the level of the reclaimed 
 marshes. 
 
 The Minsmere cliffs end abruptly some two miles 
 south of Dunwich and are immediately succeeded by a 
 stretch of sand-dunes which separate the shore from 
 the marshes known as Minsmere Level a wide reach 
 of reclaimed land, intersected by many dykes and re- 
 lieved from monotony by the picturesque ruins of 
 Leiston Old Abbey, a conspicuous feature in the land- 
 scape. On these dunes the beautiful sea-holly, with its 
 glaucous hue and leaves variegated with milk-white 
 veins, is sparingly scattered about, and with the 
 Eryngium, protected by the presence of the marram- 
 grass, masses of the purple sea-rocket, the yellow bed- 
 straw, the prickly saltwort and the pink-flowered sea- 
 milkwort. Just beyond the dilapidated hamlet of 
 Sluice, where the waters of the Minsmere river find 
 their way into the sea through an artificial aqueduct, 
 the sea-convolvulus will be seen in abundance. It is 
 one of the most attractive species of the seaside flora 
 and lends a grace and distinction to the dreariest shore. 
 All along the dunes the rest-harrow is plentiful, not the 
 prickly species of agricultural lands which gained for 
 the plant its English name, but a creeping variety with- 
 out spines, and with larger and more handsome pink 
 flowers. 
 
 Beyond Sizewell the creeping rest-harrow is the
 
 SUFFOLK SAND-DUNES 101 
 
 characteristic plant, and with it in considerable abund- 
 ance the sheep's-scabious. A few plants of the pa^e 
 green sea-spurge, a species generally more at home in 
 Suffolk on the shingle than on the sand, will also be 
 seen, and several interesting grasses. Just before 
 reaching the little fishing hamlet of Thorpe two strik- 
 ing species, of an entirely different character, are fairly 
 plentiful. A rare form, perhaps a distinct species, of 
 the common centaury known as Erythraa littoralis, 
 Fries, or the dwarf tufted centaury, a lowly plant, 
 much branched, with bright pink flowers crowded in a 
 dense cyme, found only in one or two localities on the 
 Suffolk coast, makes a beautiful show on the sandy 
 dunes ; while just at the end of the warren, where the 
 ground begins to rise, there is a goodly colony of the 
 very rare sea-buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides, L.). 
 This is a fine willow-like shrub, some seven or eight feet 
 in height, with shining silvery leaves, and bearing in 
 the autumn small orange berries. Twice only have I 
 found this handsome species in a native locality, once 
 on the wide warren between Deal and Sandwich, and 
 here on the Suffolk sand-dunes, not far from Aldeburgh. 
 Here, too, the lovely little burnet rose (Rosa spinosis- 
 sima, L.), with solitary white flowers and black, globular 
 berries, is plentiful. This is almost certainly the 
 traditional Dunwich rose of monastic legend : 
 
 " With snow-like blossom, 
 Soft, pure, and white as is the cygnet's bosom ; 
 That decks the stern and sterile cliff, and throws 
 O'er its rough brow new beauty where it grows." 
 
 The spiny sea-holly or Eryngo is beyond question one 
 of the most beautiful plants, not only of the sand-dunes,
 
 102 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 but of the British flora, and unfortunately it is becoming 
 scarcer on the Suffolk coast. It may still be seen, as we 
 have noticed, on the Minsmere dunes, and at Walbers- 
 wick and at Landguard Point it is fairly plentiful, but 
 it is not so common as it used to be, and in places, as 
 along the shore near Lowestoft, it has almost entirely 
 disappeared. In former days it was much sought after 
 for its medicinal properties, and until quite recently its 
 roots were candied as a sweetmeat in Essex and Suffolk. 
 Sir Thomas Browne, the famous Norwich antiquary, 
 speaks of the " eryngo diggers " in the seventeenth 
 century ; and Gerard, in his Herbal, gives minute 
 directions as to the proper way of " conditing " the 
 roots. The root, we learn, " is of the bignesse of a man's 
 finger, so very long as that it cannot be all plucked up 
 but very seldome, set here and there with knots, and of 
 taste sweet and pleasant." The directions for condit- 
 ing are too lengthy for full quotation. Suffice it to say 
 that a syrup must be prepared consisting of a " pinte of 
 cleer water, a pound of sugar, the white of an egge, a 
 saucer full of rose-water, a spoone full of cinnamon 
 water, and a grain of muske," into which the roots 
 " pilled clean as ye pil parsneps " must be placed, " then 
 set them on the fire in a faire broad pan untill they be 
 very hot, but let them not boile at all," after which 
 " remoove them with a wooden slice on to some royal 1 
 papers, which you must put into a stove or hot-house 
 to harden." Thus condited, " the roots are exceeding 
 good to be given to old and aged people that are con- 
 sumed and withered with age and other sorts of people. ' ' 
 The wide sandy warren lying between Benacre Broad 
 and the sea, and protected from the high tides by an 
 undulating ridge of sandhills, present? a somewhat
 
 SUFFOLK SAND-DUNES 103 
 
 barren and desolate appearance. In places the surface 
 is thickly matted with pale, sickly looking mosses and 
 lichens, and dotted here and there with stunted elder- 
 trees and dwarf clumps of thick-set gorse bushes. 
 Faded carpets of yellow Sedum or stonecrop cover the 
 sandy waste in other parts, relieved by lusty plants of 
 dock and nettle and yellow ragwort. On the Benacre 
 dunes the sea-holly seems to have disappeared ; not a 
 single plant could I find between the Covehithe cliffs 
 and Kessingland. Neither does the pink and white 
 sea-convolvulus creep among the stems of the marram- 
 grass and sand-sedge. But one plant I had not met 
 with elsewhere on the Suffolk shore was to be seen at 
 Benacre. The Danish scurvy-grass, a near relative of 
 the common scurvy-grass which usually frequents 
 muddy shores, was growing freely on the sand-dunes. 
 The species is an unattractive one, but it has interesting 
 associations, as its name indicates, from its medicinal 
 use in mediaeval times.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE SALT MARSHES OF SUFFOLK 
 
 THE county of Suffolk cannot claim to possess 
 such extensive stretches of salt marsh as may 
 be met with on the coast of Norfolk, in the neighbour- 
 hood of Wells and Hunstanton. But here and there, 
 on the borders of the Orwell and the Deben, at Orford 
 and Aldeburgh, and near the mouth of the Blyth at 
 Walberswick, tracts of marshland may be seen, bearing 
 its own distinctive flora, the haunt of gulls and curlews, 
 and possessing that strange fascination associated with 
 these " moorlands of the sea." " A more desolate 
 region can scarce be conceived," wrote a master of 
 description with reference to these salt marshes, " and 
 yet it is not without its beauty. In summer the thrift 
 mantles the marshes with shot satin, passing through 
 all gradations of tint, from maiden's-blush to lily-white. 
 Thereafter a purple glow steals over the waste, as the 
 sea-lavender bursts into flower, and simultaneously 
 every creek and pool is royally fringed with sea-aster. 
 A little later the glasswort, that shot up green and 
 transparent as emerald glass in the early spring, turns 
 to every tinge of carmine." 
 
 The salt marshes near Aldeburgh are frequently 
 alluded to by George Crabbe in his poems, and more 
 than once he gives a graphic description of their some- 
 what dreary scenery. In the " Letter " of The Borough, 
 
 104
 
 THE SALT MARSHES OF SUFFOLK 105 
 
 which treats of Peter Grimes, who " made fishing his 
 employ," we read of 
 
 " The bounding marsh-bank and the blighted tree ; 
 The water only when the tides were high ; 
 When low, the mud half-cover'd and half-dry ; 
 The sun-burnt tar that blisters on the planks, 
 And bank-side stakes in their uneven ranks ; 
 Heaps of entangled weeds that slowly float 
 As the tide rolls by the impeded boat." 
 
 In another poem, entitled The Lovers' Journey, which 
 is, in fact, a page of autobiography, he paints what 
 seemed to him the dull and desolate surroundings of 
 the mert at Aldeburgh. " Here," he cries and the 
 passage as penned by a botanist calls special atten- 
 tion 
 
 " Here a grave Flora scarcely deigns to bloom ; 
 The few dull flowers that o'er the place are spread 
 Partake the nature of their fenny bed ; 
 Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom, 
 Grows the salt lavender that lacks perfume ; 
 Here the dwarf sallows creep, the septfoil harsh, 
 And the soft slimy mallow of the marsh. 
 Birds, save a wat'ry tribe, the district shun, 
 Nor chirp among the reeds where bitter waters run." 
 
 The gloomy picture was doubtless to some extent due 
 to the state of despondency through which at the time 
 of writing he was passing, for in another passage he re- 
 minds us " that all that grows has grace," that " bog 
 and marsh and fen are only poor to undiscerning men." 
 He dwells, indeed, with affection on the flora of the 
 salt marshes. He notes the Butomus or flowering-rush 
 as growing " plentifully in the mere " between Thorpe 
 and Aldeburgh, together with the purple loosestrife
 
 io6 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 and the great spearwort. On the surrounding salt 
 marsh he notices " fat-leaved, pale-flowering scurvy- 
 grass," sea-rushes and sea-aster, the saltwort both 
 simple and shrubby, and the jointed-glasswort or 
 marsh-samphire. In fact Crabbe left an almost com- 
 plete list of the most interesting plants to be found in 
 the marshes around Aldeburgh, most of which may still 
 be seen in their old localities. 
 
 But both from a botanical and a picturesque stand- 
 point the salt marshes near Walberswick are the most 
 attractive on the Suffolk coast. These are of no great 
 extent, but they possess a flora of exceptional interest, 
 amid surroundings the reverse of desolate. An old- 
 world ferry crosses the Blyth at Walberswick, where 
 along the bank of the river black-boarded, red-tiled 
 huts and shanties, in which the fishermen store their 
 tackle, lie clustered together, while all kinds of lumber 
 and wreckage are scattered about in picturesque con- 
 fusion. Between the village roadway and the sea 
 stretches an expanse of marshland more or less inun- 
 dated at every high tide. Deep dykes, " with banks of 
 sloping mud," intersect the marsh in various directions, 
 spanned in places by wooden bridges of curious work- 
 manship. A bank of shingle lies between the marsh 
 and the sea, on which flourish many choice plants, such 
 as the sea-spurge, the sea-holly, the yellow horned- 
 poppy and the exceedingly rare sea-pea. The marsh 
 itself supports a varied flora, including the majority of 
 species usually met with in such localities. The orache, 
 or crab-grass, as it is locally called, is the commonest 
 plant, which covers the mud flats and banks of the 
 creeks with its silvery foliage and spikes of incon- 
 spicuous flowers. With the " crab-grass " will be seen
 
 THE SALT MARSHES OF SUFFOLK 107 
 
 the sea-beet in abundance, the leaves of which often 
 turn red as summer advances, the sea-spurrey, the 
 sea-milkwort and the sea-plantain, with conspicuous 
 yellow anthers. In the shelter of the dilapidated 
 shanties the beautiful silvery Artemisia or sea-worm- 
 wood grows in luxuriant profusion. Along the oozy 
 borders of the dykes the jointed-glasswort abounds, 
 called in Suffolk the marsh-samphire, and the plant, 
 like the real samphire, is often gathered for purposes of 
 pickling. On the drier portions of the marsh the sur- 
 face is starred here and there with the exquisite pink 
 blossoms of the dwarf centaury, a rare and choice 
 variety of the common type. 
 
 But still rarer species flourish on the Walberswick 
 marshes. Among them may be mentioned the shrubby 
 sea-blite, the exquisite little sea-heath, the slender 
 hare's-ear and a very scarce sea-purslane. The 
 shrubby sea-blite (Suceda fruticosa, Forsk.) is a near 
 relative of the common sea-blite of our salt marshes, 
 from which it may be at once distinguished by its larger 
 size, its woody stem, and by the fact of its flowers 
 possessing three styles instead of two. It is an un- 
 attractive shrub, with dark, succulent, cylindrical 
 leaves, and except for its rarity would hardly merit 
 attention. It is found only at Portland, in the county 
 of Dorset, and in East Anglia, where in several places 
 it is fairly plentiful. In Essex it may be seen at 
 Maldon, St Osyth and Mersea Island ; on the meal 
 marshes of Norfolk, near Wells, it is sparingly scattered 
 over a wide area ; but in Suffolk it is distinctly rare. 
 Although in former years it has been recorded for Aide- 
 burgh and Southwold, I have never found it in either 
 locality ; but on the Walberswick marshes one little
 
 io8 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 thicket of it remains. The fishermen will tell you that 
 the plant owes its origin to some seeds being washed 
 ashore from the wreck of a ship, but it is undoubtedly 
 indigenous in East Anglia. Near the thicket of Suceda 
 fruticosa a few plants of the slender hare's-ear (Bup- 
 leurum tenuissimum, L.) may, by diligent searching, be 
 found. It is, as its name indicates, a small, unassuming 
 species, with grass-like leaves and minute yellowish 
 flowers, but of special interest on account of its rarity. 
 Crabbe found it on the banks of the river at Hollesley 
 and by the salt ditches in the Aldeburgh marshes, 
 where, it may be, it still flourishes, and perhaps no- 
 where else on the Suffolk coast except at Walberswick. 
 The stalked sea-purslane has also been recorded from 
 the same localities, but I have repeatedly searched for 
 it in vain. If, however, the existence of the rare pur- 
 slane be doubtful, this is not the case with the equally 
 scarce and far more beautiful sea-heath, or Frankenia 
 Icevis, L. This lovely little plant, with wiry stems and 
 small rose-coloured flowers, trails over the muddy 
 surface of the marsh, giving sometimes, from the 
 abundance of its blossoms, a rosy tint to the ground 
 over which it creeps. If the plant be closely examined 
 it will be seen that the leaves are rolled back at the 
 margins, giving them the appearance of being linear 
 instead of oblong. It is found in Suffolk only on the 
 salt marshes near Bawdsey Ferry, and at Walberswick, 
 where it has increased of late years. 
 
 The most beautiful plant in the flora of the salt 
 marshes is beyond question the sea-lavender. It comes 
 into flower late in summer, when the crab-grass is be- 
 ginning to turn yellow, and the sea-aster or starwort is 
 fringing the pools, and it often covers with sheets of its
 
 THE SALT MARSHES OF SUFFOLK 109 
 
 beautiful mauve flowers wide stretches of marshland. 
 The sea-lavender both the common species and the 
 rarer kind with more spreading panicles is plentiful 
 near the ferry at Walberswick and also in the salt 
 marshes beside the heronry. Sitting one evening in 
 August on the rising ground beneath the great Scotch 
 firs, in which earlier in the season some forty pairs of 
 herons had made their nests, the sea-lavender on the 
 mud-flats below presented a striking appearance. The 
 entire level was aglow with a pale purple sheen of 
 colour. The surroundings, too, added charm to the 
 picture. A stately heron was standing motionless in 
 the shallow water at the edge of the tidal river, flocks 
 of sea-gulls and ringed plover were feeding on the mud 
 left bare by the receding tide ; in the distance the trees 
 of Henham Park bounded the landscape ; to the left, 
 beyond a dense jungle of reed-grass and rushes, rose the 
 magnificent church tower of Blythburgh ; while im- 
 mediately below, on the stretch of salting lying between 
 the fir-trees and the river, gleamed in the soft glow of 
 the setting sun the beautiful expanse of sea-lavender.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MINSMERE LEVEL 
 
 T3ETWEEN the cluster of dilapidated cottages 
 -D known as the Sluice, on the Suffolk coast, and 
 the inland hamlet of East Bridge there lie some two 
 miles of reclaimed marshland known as Minsmere 
 Level. 
 
 A straight canal, called the " new cut," bounded on 
 either side by a sea-wall, runs right through the centre 
 of it, from the bridge which gives to the hamlet its 
 name to the sluice or aqueduct on the shore. Three 
 drainage windmills with picturesque brown tops and 
 sails are conspicuous objects in the landscape, and the 
 striking ruins of an old monastic chapel. For in 
 mediaeval days an abbey stood on the tongue of land 
 slightly raised above the level of the swamp. It was 
 founded in the middle of the twelfth century by one 
 Ranulph de Glanvile for a small community of Prae- 
 monstratensian monks. The situation, owing to the 
 noxious exhalations of the marsh, doubtless proved very 
 unhealthy, and some two hundred years later a larger 
 abbey was erected about a mile and a half distant on 
 higher ground. It is probable, however, that until the 
 Reformation a few monks continued to occupy the 
 Minsmere Monastery, and we read of one John Green, 
 abbot of the new establishment at Leiston, resigning 
 his position in order to become a hermit " at the chapel 
 
 no
 
 MINSMERE LEVEL in 
 
 of St Mary in the old monastery by the sea." It is the 
 remains of this chapel, standing on the desolate marsh, 
 that form so arresting a feature in the dreary landscape. 
 The roof of the building and the stone mullions of the 
 windows have entirely disappeared, but the outside 
 walls remain, built of pebbles from the beach, inter- 
 spersed here and there with a few Roman tiles. On the 
 crumbling walls of the chapel, which only measures 
 some 35 feet by 18, various plants have established 
 themselves, such as mallow and mustard and pearlwort 
 and fescue-grasses. A single specimen of the char- 
 acteristic Suffolk species, Sisymbrium Sophia, L., or 
 flixweed, was also nourishing on the broken masonry. 
 From the shelter of the ruin it was possible to watch 
 unobserved the wild life of the marshes. A large flock 
 of swallows, old birds and young, had congregated, as 
 they will do before migration, on the fallow outside, 
 every now and then rising in a body and settling again. 
 A couple of kestrel-hawks were hovering over the 
 marshes on the look-out for field mice, which abound on 
 the drier portions of the level, several herons rose with 
 laboured flight from the reed-fringed dykes, a solitary 
 curlew flew over the chapel just above the summit of 
 the walls, while all around, in keeping with the weird 
 and desolate surroundings, rose the mournful wail of 
 the green plover. 
 
 When the good Leiston Abbot was living as an 
 anchorite in the chapel by the sea the marshes were 
 as yet untouched by man. Kingsley's description of 
 Whittlesea Mere before the draining of the fens 
 might almost equally well be applied to the old 
 Minsmere marshes, which must have been a famous 
 resort of wild-fowl in the olden times. Even in the
 
 H2 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 days of George Crabbe it was no uncommon thing to 
 
 hear 
 
 " the loud bittern, from the bullrush home, 
 Give from the salt-ditch side the bellowing boom." 
 
 But many of the rarer birds have forsaken their ancient 
 haunts, although in hard winters a goodly number of 
 interesting species are met with. And the reclaiming 
 of the marshes has also affected the flora of the district. 
 Many choice plants have vanished, or have become ex- 
 ceedingly rare. The splendid Osmunda or Royal fern, 
 once common in the marshes, is now seldom seen. The 
 marsh ragwort and the marsh Cineraria have become 
 very scarce, while the great marsh sow-thistle is all but 
 extinct. So too with the choice two-leaved Liparis 
 or fen-orchis. It formerly grew in many of the Suffolk 
 bogs and marshes, but has now very nearly disappeared. 
 But though the Minsmere marshes have been drained, 
 and cattle and horses now feed on a broad expanse of 
 pasture-land, yet along the dykes which intersect the 
 Level many interesting plants may be met with. The 
 flora of these dykes or ditches is, of course, entirely 
 different from that of the adjacent sand-dunes and 
 shingle which separate the reclaimed marshes from the 
 shore, or of the meal marshes which often border the 
 sea. It is a flora of its own, consisting of aquatic and 
 bog plants, of pondweeds, sedges and rushes, and in- 
 cluding several species of ferns which have now become 
 extremely rare. And this flora, if lacking the peculiar 
 fascination of that of the seashore, is not without 
 interest and distinction. Indeed there is much pleasure 
 in wandering along these straight dykes fringed with 
 reeds and tall grasses, the haunt of ducks and moor- 
 hens, of dabchicks and reed-warblers.
 
 MINSMERE LEVEL 113 
 
 The plants that most usually line the dykes, some- 
 times with a dense jungle of herbage, are the common 
 reed and the branched bur-reed or Sparganium. The 
 sword-like leaves of this latter species are very con- 
 spicuous along the ditches, mingled with the broad 
 leaves, which often turn reddish in the autumn, of the 
 great water-dock. In places, too, the reed-mace, 
 commonly but erroneously called the bull-rush, is 
 abundant, and now and then the far more beautiful 
 and elegant lesser reed-mace. Gerard calls the reed- 
 mace by its mediaeval name of " cat's-taile," and men- 
 tions various uses to which the down of the conspicuous 
 " mace or torch " was wont to be put. " The soft 
 downe," we learn, " stamped with Swines grease wel 
 washed healeth burnes or scalds with fire or water." 
 Moreover, " this downe in some places of the Isle of Ely 
 and the Low countries adioyning thereto is gathered 
 and well sold to make mattresses thereof for plow-men 
 and poore people." This custom no longer exists in 
 East Anglia, but the handsome plant is often cut and 
 sold for decorative purposes. The water plantain, with 
 tall flower-stems and loose panicles of small pale lilac 
 blossoms, is another frequent species along the ditches, 
 which are often choked with the rank growth of water- 
 hemlock, of which " the whole plant is of a naughty 
 smell." 
 
 The somewhat sombre colouring of the dykes is often 
 relieved by vivid patches of colour when the great hairy 
 willow-herb puts forth its large rose-coloured flowers, 
 or the splendid purple loosestrife, perhaps the " long- 
 purples " of Shakespeare, fringes the " fleets " with its 
 flowers. Nor must the more select flowering-rush 
 (Butomus umbellatus, L.) be forgotten, one of the most
 
 ii4 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 handsome of our bog-loving species, with its umbel of 
 rose-red flowers clustered at the top of a round stalk, 
 which rises several feet above the surface of the water. 
 This fine plant is not to be found on Minsmere Level, 
 though it abounds in a marsh not many miles distant, 
 but all along the side of the dyke which runs nearest to 
 the ruined chapel the rare and exquisite marsh- mallow, 
 with soft, velvety leaves and pale purplish flowers, is 
 abundant. 
 
 Where the dykes are not overgrown with rank herb- 
 age, choicer and more delicate species may sometimes 
 be seen flowering in the open water. In such places, it 
 is true, unattractive pondweeds and starworts often 
 manage to obtain a monopoly, and not infrequently the 
 entire surface of the water is covered with a uniform 
 scum of unwholesome-looking duckweed, or, as the old 
 herbalists called it, " ducks' meat." Old Gerard in 
 his Herbal has a quaint woodcut representing a moat 
 beneath a fortress covered with the " very little round 
 leaves of the bigness of Lentils " of this plant, on which 
 several ducks are feeding. But in the more open dykes 
 of the Minsmere Level, where the " ducks' meat " has 
 not gained the mastery, several interesting species may 
 be seen. Along one reach of water the lesser water- 
 plantain is established, a rare and delicate plant with 
 rather large flowers of a pale pink colour and with a 
 spot of yellow in the centre. The bladder-wort, too, is 
 not uncommon, and here and there along the dark 
 stretch of water the deep yellow flowers stand up with 
 striking effect. In other ditches the orbicular leaves 
 of the uncommon and elegant frog-bit entirely cover 
 the surface of the water, and when the plant is in 
 flower the dainty white blossoms are very attractive.
 
 MTNSMERE LEVEL 115 
 
 The name "frogge-bit " goes back to mediaeval times 
 and enshrines the belief that frogs fed upon the plant, 
 while its scientific designation of Hydrocharis has refer- 
 ence to its elegant appearance. And it would indeed 
 be difficult to exaggerate the beauty of this little water 
 plant, with its floating leaves deep green above and of 
 a reddish tint beneath, and white flowers of three 
 crumpled petals and clusters of barren yellow stamens. 
 In spite of the artificial dykes which intersect the 
 Level, and the almost constant working of the three 
 windmills to draw off the stagnant water, the marsh in 
 places is very swampy and of little use as pasture-land. 
 In these boggy parts of Minsmere Level, amid the 
 tussocks of coarse grass and rushes, snipes and red- 
 shanks make their nests every spring, as in the old days 
 of Abbot John. Now, as then, the " drumming " of 
 snipes is a frequent sound on the desolate marshes 
 during the breeding season, when the beautiful buck- 
 bean is in flower. Later on, as the summer advances, 
 the very rare grass-of-Parnassus, with its delicately 
 veined, cream-coloured blossoms, will grace the swamp 
 with its presence, as it doubtless has done since the 
 far-off days of the fifteenth century, when the good 
 hermit meditated in " the chapel of St Mary in the 
 old monastery by the sea."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FLORA OF THE RAILWAY 
 
 FOR many years past I have kept a watchful eye 
 on the flora of our railways. For, strange as 
 it may seem, railroads afford a special attraction to 
 numbers of British plants. The most casual observer 
 must have noticed the extraordinary show sometimes 
 made by wild flowers along a stretch of railway em- 
 bankment. In places the slopes will be a sheet of gold 
 with the blossom of the furze or of the common broom. 
 Or perhaps the rose-bay or flowering willow-herb has 
 taken possession of a cutting, and the banks will be a 
 blaze of colour. 
 
 And indeed, when one comes to think about it, it is 
 not strange that it should be so. A railway embank- 
 ment sloping to the south or west, under the genial 
 influence of the sunshine and the rain, is just such a 
 situation as many wild flowers delight in. The slopes, 
 moreover, are seldom interfered with, and plants can 
 fulfil their destiny of producing seed in peace. In 
 places where deep cuttings have been made, the almost 
 perpendicular sides will speedily attract some wall- 
 loving species. Often, again, especially in the eastern 
 counties, a dyke or ditch will accompany the railway 
 line for leagues together, and here aquatic plants can 
 flourish undisturbed. Even the ballast between the 
 iron rails on the permanent way will afford shelter to 
 
 116
 
 FLORA OF THE RAILWAY 117 
 
 many a lowly annual ; while not infrequently the 
 railroad is the highway along which species trans- 
 fer themselves from one part of the country to 
 another. 
 
 A most interesting example of the modern method 
 of travelling among plants may be recorded. For 
 many years past there has flourished on the walls of 
 Oxford a very rare member of the ragwort or groundsel 
 tribe, which rejoices in the not altogether attractive 
 name of Senecio squalidm, L. It is believed to have 
 originally escaped from the Botanic Gardens, where it 
 was cultivated by Bobart the Elder, the first Keeper 
 of the Gardens, about the middle of the seventeenth 
 century. Until the introduction of railways 5. sqttali- 
 dus, L., seems to have been satisfied with occupying the 
 ancient walls and buildings of the university town, 
 which came to be recognised as its adopted home, and 
 from which it received its English name of the Oxford 
 ragwort. But when the Great Western Railway 
 system was inaugurated it began to grow restless and 
 to migrate beyond the limits of Oxford. Along the 
 permanent way it extended itself, until in course of 
 time it reached Reading, where it occupied the railway 
 banks and waste places. Later on the Great Western 
 Railway line was extended by way of Newbury to East- 
 leigh, and once again S. squalidus, L., began to travel 
 southwards. At length it arrived at Winchester, and 
 last summer several plants might be seen blooming 
 happily beside the permanent way at the Great Western 
 Railway Station. 
 
 A newly made embankment, even if composed of 
 chalk, will be quickly covered with vegetation. How 
 the seeds are conveyed to the virgin soil in such amaz-
 
 n8 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 ing numbers may be a matter of scientific speculation, 
 but the fact remains beyond dispute. When the Meon 
 Valley Railway in Hampshire was being made, some 
 twenty-five years ago, the long, curving line of low 
 embankment which ran not far from the course of 
 the river between Wickham and Warnford was almost 
 immediately occupied with a dense growth of yellow 
 charlock. Long before the line was ready for traffic 
 the course of the railway all down the green valley 
 could be traced by a winding ribbon of shining 
 gold. After the first season or two other plants 
 entered into competition, and the yellow line of 
 charlock became less and less conspicuous. And 
 now a vast number of different species occupy the 
 embankment. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, a railway embankment is a verit- 
 able flower garden at the right season. I know such a 
 garden on the Great Western Railway line between 
 Winchester and Shawford, where the line runs below 
 the shelter of St Catherine's Hill. The embankment 
 slopes towards the west, looking over the canal in the 
 direction of the ancient hospital of St Cross. Often in 
 summer-time do I visit this garden. It is probably at 
 its best in the early days of June, when the slope is 
 literally ablaze with colour. Yellow predominates, not 
 only because of the splendid patches of Lotus corni- 
 culatus, L., or bird's-foot trefoil, but also because of the 
 abundance of the much rarer and far more local tufted 
 horseshoe vetch. At first sight the plant might be mis- 
 taken for the common lotus, but the curious structure 
 of the seed vessels, which resemble a series of horseshoes 
 united by their extremities, at once distinguishes it. 
 With the deep yellow of the leguminosa is mingled a
 
 FLORA OF THE RAILWAY 119 
 
 variety of other hues. Tall red spikes of rumex shoot 
 up from among tangled masses of the white bedstraw ; 
 poppies are abundant ; the beautiful calcareous milk- 
 wort, with its variegated flowers of blue and purple and 
 white, is in full blossom ; the " speedwell's darling 
 blue " mingles with the bright yellow flowers of the 
 common rock-rose ; and from the shelter of the elder 
 bushes, now covered with snow-white blossoms, the 
 purple " foxglove spire " is conspicuous. The dog- 
 roses, great bushes of which flourish on the embank- 
 ment, are in all their glory, and along the slope will be 
 seen here and there the pale yellow flowers of wild 
 mignonette and the pink and white blossoms of the rare 
 and lovely dropwort, first cousin to the common 
 meadowsweet. But what renders the wild garden so 
 remarkable is the profusion of the bee-orchis on the 
 slope. The seed had, of course, come from the downs 
 above, where, however, the species cannot be regarded 
 as plentiful. But here on the railway embankment it 
 was abundant. The soil and situation were clearly to 
 its liking although what constitutes favourable con- 
 ditions to the species few botanists would venture to 
 declare for tall specimens, carrying five or six exquisite 
 bee-flowers, might be gathered by the handful. With- 
 in a few yards of the line a fine colony of the exceedingly 
 rare musk-orchis, Herminium Monorchis, Br., had 
 established itself. I failed, however, much to my dis- 
 appointment, to find a single specimen actually on the 
 railway. 
 
 In very hot seasons the flora of the railway suffers 
 severely. During the dry summer of 1911 I remember 
 travelling from London to Walberswick, on the Suffolk 
 coast. All along the line were unsightly black patches,
 
 120 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 where the herbage had caught fire from the sparks of 
 the engine. Hardly a flower was to be seen here and 
 there a few scarlet poppies, or some yellow ragwort, or 
 a plant or two of the common milfoil or the purple knap- 
 weed. The grass and the tenderer species were all 
 scorched up, and the slopes of the cuttings and em- 
 bankments were brown and bare. Only on changing 
 trains at Halesworth for the little Southwold line did I 
 notice on a steep embankment a thriving cluster of the 
 wild fennel, which I had never before associated with 
 the railway flora. 
 
 Now and again rare and choice wild flowers may be 
 encountered on the railroad. When I was in Switzer- 
 land some seasons ago I noticed that the railway em- 
 bankment between Territet and Montreux, on the shore 
 of the Lake of Geneva, was covered with the attractive 
 deep blue flowers of the grape hyacinth. Here at home 
 a beautiful hybrid between the two wild species of 
 Linaria L. repens, Mill., and L. vulgaris, Mill. 
 makes a fine show on a steep embankment not many 
 miles from Winchester. Nearer to the city, at the 
 summit of a deep chalk cutting, some lusty plants of the 
 purple salsify have blossomed the last two or three 
 summers. On the same London and South Western 
 line, but nearer Eastleigh Station, some plants of the 
 rare and very beautiful Epipactus palustris, Sw., or 
 marsh helleborine, have taken a fancy to the railway. 
 Escaping from a marshy swamp that adjoins the line, a 
 dozen or more plants have invaded the permanent way. 
 There they were to be seen in August last year actually 
 blooming between the iron rails. They were naturally 
 somewhat stunted individuals, for the E. palustris, Sw., 
 as its name indicates, is a frequenter of swampy places,
 
 FLORA OF THE RAILWAY 121 
 
 and the permanent way did not afford the sort of hospi- 
 tality desired ; but there they were making the best of 
 their unwonted surroundings, the choicest species in 
 the strangest situation that I have yet met with among 
 the flora of the railroad.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 LENT LILY WOOD 
 
 ALTHOUGH the daffodil or Lent lily has been 
 immortalised by Shakespeare as the flower of 
 the English spring, 
 
 " That comes before the swallow dares, and takes 
 The winds of March with beauty," 
 
 yet in most seasons it is seldom seen in full blossom 
 before April. The second week in the month is per- 
 haps the best time to visit Lent Lily Wood in order to 
 see the golden daffodils in their complete glory. It is 
 indeed a sight never to be forgotten. For thirty years 
 and more I have been what old Gerard calls " a diligent 
 and curious searcher after simples " that is, an ardent 
 botanist who has travelled far arid wide in search of 
 wild flowers but in all my wanderings up and down the 
 country I have never met with so magnificent a display 
 of spring flowers as the Lent Lily Wood now presents. 
 The daffodils are to be seen in myriads, thousands upon 
 thousands, thickly scattered throughout the wood. In 
 the month of May there will be sheets of hyacinths, 
 which seem, as Tennyson said, as though " the heavens 
 were upbreaking thro' the earth" ; but though the 
 bluebells will present "a paradise of blossom," yet in 
 point of splendour they do not equal the display of 
 daffodils in mid-April. At this season there is less 
 
 122
 
 LENT LILY WOOD 123 
 
 competition, too, with other flowers, and the trees and 
 underwood still wear their winter dress. The elms, it 
 is true, are in blossom, and catkins are quivering on the 
 hazel boughs, but the branches are still bare of leaves. 
 Outside, near the keeper's cottage, the mossy banks are 
 starred with celandines, and here and there beneath 
 the oak-trees a few anemones will be found, but the 
 daffodils have almost complete possession of the wood. 
 And there for a season in countless hosts they reign in 
 tranquil splendour, every one perfect in its own loveli- 
 ness. Verily Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
 like one of these. 
 
 In former days the daffodil seems to have been much 
 commoner than it is now. In the sixteenth century 
 Gerard says that " it groweth almost everywhere 
 through England," and, he adds, " the common yellow 
 Daffodill, or Daffodowndilly, is so well knowne to all 
 that it needeth no description." It is still well distri- 
 buted throughout the country, and in Hampshire it 
 occurs in many localities. I have met with it in various 
 places, but nowhere in such vast profusion as in the 
 Lent Lily Wood. There is a beautiful colony of it in a 
 large copse close to Quarr Abbey, in the Isle of Wight, 
 and it is curious to notice how partial the plant is to the 
 neighbourhood of monastic ruins. No doubt the good 
 brethren who were lovers of the beautiful delighted in 
 its presence and encouraged the bulbs to spread near 
 their sacred surroundings. It will be noticed that 
 Gerard speaks of the plant as " Daffodill or Daffodown- 
 dilly," and this second name, though it may sound a 
 vulgarism, dates back to very early times. We meet 
 with it in Spenser and in Constable and other sixteenth- 
 century writers. The origin of the name " daffodil "
 
 124 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 is hidden in obscurity. Some assert that it is a corrup- 
 tion of Asphodel ; others that it is simply the old 
 Anglo-Saxon word " affodyle," which signifies " that 
 which cometh early." Other authorities, including 
 Dr Prior, would regard it as a corruption of saffron- 
 lily ; and that the plant is commonly associated with the 
 lily tribe is clear from its popular name of Lent or 
 Lenten Lily, which in the Isle of Wight is sometimes 
 corrupted into Lantern Lily. But whatever be the 
 origin of the word, whether in the form of " Daffodill or 
 Daffodowndilly," it must certainly be reckoned among 
 the ancient names of British plants. 
 
 There is little wonder that the daffodil has been a 
 favourite flower with the poets. Alike in classical and 
 in modern times its praises have been sung. Gower 
 celebrates it, and Shakespeare has enshrined it in im- 
 mortal verse. "The daffodillies," says Milton, "fill 
 their cups with tears." Wordsworth's exquisite lyric 
 is well known ; but hardly less poetical is his sister's 
 prose description of the spot, " beside the lake, beneath 
 the trees," where the flowers flourished. " They 
 grew," she wrote, " among the mossy stones ; . . . 
 some rested their heads on these stones as on a pillow, 
 the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if 
 they verily laughed with the wind they looked so gay 
 and glancing." " A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," 
 cries Keats in Endymion, 
 
 " and such are daffodils, 
 With the green world they live in." 
 
 And Shelley sings : 
 
 " Narcissus, the fairest among them all, 
 Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, 
 Till they die of their own dear loveliness."
 
 LENT LILY WOOD 125 
 
 It is not surprising that John Clare, the poor peasant- 
 poet of Northamptonshire, dwells with affection on the 
 " drooping daffodil," for was it not a " sweet omen of 
 returning spring " ? The poems of Matthew Arnold 
 contain many choice allusions to wild flowers, especially 
 to those growing in the neighbourhood of Oxford, and 
 in his beautiful monody in commemoration of Arthur 
 Hugh Clough he calls to mind " the wood which hides 
 the daffodil." 
 
 We remember, too, the lovely lines of Herrick : 
 
 " Fair Daffodils, we weep to see 
 
 You haste away so soon ; 
 As yet the early-rising sun 
 Has not attain'd his noon. 
 
 Stay, stay, 
 Until the hasting day 
 
 Has run 
 
 But to the even-song ; 
 And having pray'd together, we 
 Will go with you along." 
 
 The language of the poets may perhaps sound 
 somewhat high-flown and fanciful, and yet it seemed 
 to me that it was hardly possible to exaggerate 
 the calm and quiet beauty of Lent Lily W T ood as 
 I saw it in the fitful sunlight of a spring morning. 
 The wood in itself is one of exceptional charm, 
 with winding pathways ever opening out some new 
 vista of delight. But it is never so attractive as 
 when the daffodils are in flower. The sight is so 
 striking that it is stamped, as it were, upon the 
 memory. The experience of the poet of the English 
 lakes must have been often repeated in the case of 
 many a " wandering herbalist " who has had the good
 
 126 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 fortune to behold a host of daffodils dancing and 
 fluttering in the breeze : 
 
 " For oft, when on my couch I lie 
 
 In vacant or in pensive mood, 
 
 They flash upon that inward eye 
 
 Which is the bliss of solitude, 
 
 And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
 
 And dances with the Daffodils."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 FRITILLARIES 
 
 IT is curious how some rare and attractive plants, 
 confined, it may be, to comparatively a few places 
 in Great Britain, are yet extraordinarily abundant in 
 the places where they occur. The wild tulip is a very 
 scarce species, but I know of one disused chalk-pit 
 where it covers the entire surface of the ground. The 
 beautiful Scilla autumnalis, L., or autumnal squill, only 
 occurs in one locality in the county of Hampshire, but 
 there it stars with its exquisite blossoms some acres of 
 ground. The lovely summer snowflake is seldom met 
 with, but on the banks of the Loddon, near Reading, it 
 is abundant. So with the fritillary or snake's-head, 
 one of the handsomest and most attractive plants in the 
 British flora. It is now to be found in perhaps one 
 locality only in Hampshire, but there, at the right 
 season, it is to be seen in tens of thousands. The last 
 week in April is the best time to see this gorgeous sight, 
 but the plant lingers on in blossom for the space of 
 nearly a month. I paid a visit to this favoured spot a 
 few years ago, and well was I rewarded for a long 
 journey. There is no secret about the locality, for 
 during the season of flowering it is visited by vast 
 numbers of people on foot, on bicycles, in carriages, in 
 motor cars, who carry away with them bunches of the 
 curiously marked and exquisitely beautiful blossoms. 
 127
 
 128 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Indeed, while the plant is in flower, a good woman 
 presides over the floral festival and sells hundreds of 
 bunches of blossoms, the profit of which is devoted to 
 some local charity. A little hut, made of wattle and 
 straw, and lined with some household stuff, is made for 
 her beneath the shelter of a high hedge at the entrance 
 to the meadows, and there, from early morn till dewy 
 eve, she remains till the harvest is over. The spot, 
 which is in the extreme north of the county, is situated 
 on the estate which a grateful country granted to the 
 Iron Duke after the battle of Waterloo. The famous 
 avenue of elm-trees, nearly a mile long, perhaps the 
 finest in the county, opens out on the highroad, and in 
 the meadows which lie between the road and the river 
 the colony of fritillaries will be found. The River 
 Loddon here divides the counties of Hants and Berk- 
 shire, and on both sides of the stream the flowers are 
 abundant. In his poem on Windsor Forest Pope speaks 
 of " The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crown'd," 
 and the epithet is true. The stream is a very sluggish 
 one, but in most winters it overflows its banks, and the 
 f ritillary meadows are sometimes under water for weeks 
 together. This condition of things exactly suits the 
 species, which flourishes best in swampy ground, and 
 at Strathfieldsaye it flourishes exceedingly. Scattered 
 over two large meadows, of many acres in extent, on 
 the Hampshire side of the Loddon, the flowers may be 
 seen in marvellous profusion. In places you can hardly 
 see the green grass for the flowers. There are literally 
 wide sheets of purple and of white fritillaries. The 
 flowers are mostly solitary, and except when in bud 
 always drooping, while in shape they are like a tulip. 
 The beauty of the colouring is only equalled by its
 
 FRITILLARIES 129 
 
 \ 
 
 strange and unique character. The family name 
 Fritillary is derived from the Latin word fntillus, a 
 dice-box, which is the common accompaniment of a 
 chequer-board, which the markings of the flower re- 
 semble ; while its specific name, meleagris, also applied 
 to a guinea-fowl, has reference to the same peculiarity. 
 The plant is well described by old Gerard in his Herbal, 
 and is worth quoting, alike for the quaintness of the 
 language and for the accuracy of the delineation. 
 " The Checquered Daffodill or Ginny-hen Floure," as 
 he calls the fritillary, " hath small narrow grassie 
 leaves, among which there riseth up a stalke three 
 hands high, having at the top one or two floures, which 
 consisteth of six small leaves chequered most strangely : 
 wherein Nature, or rather the Creator of all things, hath 
 kept a very wonderful order, surpassing (as in all other 
 things) the curioustest painting that Art can set 
 doune. One square is of a greenish-yellow colour, 
 the other purple, keeping the same order as well 
 on the backside of the floure as on the inside, although 
 they are blackish in one square, and of a Violet 
 colour in an other ; insomuch that every leafe seemeth 
 to be the feather of a Ginny hen, whereof it tooke 
 his name." 
 
 It has been questioned whether the fritillary, or 
 ginny-hen flower, is really an indigenous plant in Great 
 Britain, and indeed it is ranked by Watson as a 
 " denizen " that is, as a species labouring under sus- 
 picion of having been introduced by human agency. It 
 is certainly a curious fact that the early botanists pass 
 over the plant in silence, for it is undoubtedly one of the 
 most showy species in the British flora. There is no 
 mention of it in Turner, or Johnson, or Ray. Gerard,
 
 130 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 as we have seen, accurately describes it, but he knows 
 it only as a garden flower. It is greatly esteemed, he 
 says, " for the beautifying of our gardens," and he adds, 
 " for the bosoms of the beautifull." The earliest notice 
 of it as a wild plant seems to have been in the year 1737, 
 when it is included in a list of Harefield plants. It is 
 now abundant, as all Oxford men know, in the Christ 
 Church meadows and near Iffley, which may be re- 
 garded as its classical locality on English soil, but the 
 great Dillenius, who was Sherardian Professor of Botany 
 from 1728 to the time of his death in 1747, never men- 
 tions it ; and the first record of it at Oxford is about the 
 year 1775, when Dr John Lightfoot, a distinguished 
 botanist, notes it as growing in Magdalen College 
 meadows. The earliest record of its existence in 
 Suffolk is in the year 1776, in Essex in 1815, and at 
 Strathfieldsaye, where it now grows in such lavish 
 abundance, in the year 1823. 
 
 It is also strange that there seems to be no recognised 
 English name by which Fritillaria meleagris, L., is 
 known. Gerard, as we have seen, calls it " the 
 Checquered Daffodill or Ginny-hen Floure." When Dr 
 Bromfield visited the Strathfieldsaye locality about the 
 year 1850 he could find no one who knew its name ; 
 some, he tells us, " called the plants snowdrops (the 
 white variety), others daffodils, while the rest pro- 
 nounced them to be cowslips ! " In answer to my in- 
 quiry the lady of the wattle hut informed me that 
 " some people calls it Turk's-cap, some wild tulip, and 
 some, who be fine scholars, fritillaries. " In other places 
 the plant is known as " snake 's-head." This latter is 
 an excellent term, for not only do the chequered mark- 
 ings on the petals resemble those of a snake, but in an
 
 FRITILLARIES 131 
 
 unexpanded state the blossom, which is then nearly 
 erect, bears a striking resemblance to the shape and 
 attitude of a snake's head. 
 
 On the other hand, in favour of the indigenous nature 
 of Fritillaria meleagris, L., it must be remembered that 
 its geographical distribution in Europe would lead us to 
 expect its presence in Great Britain, while the appear- 
 ance of the plant in such localities as Christ Church 
 meadows and at Strathfieldsaye have every indica- 
 tion of true nativity. Moreover, it is not confined 
 to one or two habitats only in the valley of the 
 Thames and of its tributaries ; the plant is now 
 recorded in The London Catalogue for no less than 
 seventeen counties. 
 
 As so often happens, the beauty of the plant has 
 tended to its extinction. In many localities it has 
 been entirely eradicated through the baneful habit 
 of transplanting wild species into gardens. In 
 former years it was to be found in Hampshire, near 
 the town of Bishop's Waltham, where the children 
 were accustomed to gather it for their May Day 
 garlands, but it has now completely disappeared. In 
 Essex, too, in a damp meadow just beyond the 
 village of Steeple Bumpstead, it was once to be seen 
 in considerable plenty, but not a plant, I believe, 
 now remains. 
 
 In the Strathfieldsaye locality the white and the 
 purple varieties seem to occur equally, and it is 
 difficult to say which is the more beautiful. This 
 variation in colour is characteristic of the species 
 and is generally found wherever the plant grows in 
 any abundance. It is so in the neighbourhood of 
 Oxford, as we are reminded in the lines of Matthew
 
 132 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Arnold, in his beautiful commemoration of Arthur 
 Hugh Clough : 
 
 " I know what white, what purple fritillaries, 
 The grassy harvest of the river-fields 
 Above by Eynsham, down by Sandford, yields." 
 
 In both localities the white and the purple varieties are 
 as plentiful now as when the poet wrote Thyrsis.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE WOODS IN MAY 
 
 A TTRACTIVE as are the woods in winter, when 
 /"\ the bare branches of the trees stand out clearly 
 against the grey sky, attractive as they are in early 
 spring, when signs of awakening life are on every hand 
 and the ground is starred with primroses and anemones, 
 they are perhaps to many persons more attractive still 
 when the voice of the cuckoo is first heard in the land. 
 
 It is difficult to exaggerate the glory of a wood when 
 the bluebells or wild hyacinths carpet the slopes be- 
 neath the beech-trees. Tennyson might well describe 
 the scene as " the heavens uprising from the earth." 
 And with the bluebells a number of other species will be 
 found. The yellow archangel, with its large, handsome 
 flowers, lends a variety of colour to the scene, and in 
 the damp hollows there are masses of the wood forget- 
 me-not. A few wild orchids will be seen here and 
 there, the twayblade and the " long purples " certainly, 
 and perhaps the beautiful butterfly-orchis, and not im- 
 possibly in the more open spaces of the wood the white 
 helleborine or the rare and curious fly-orchis. 
 
 It is these choicer species that give to the woods 
 an additional interest and delight. In many of our 
 Hampshire copses the Solomon's-seal is not uncommon, 
 though, strange to say, it is unknown in the Isle of 
 Wight. The plant, which belongs to the lily tribe, is 
 
 133
 
 134 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 one of the most elegant of British wild flowers, and gives 
 grace and distinction to any wood where it may be 
 found. It attracted the notice of the early botanists, 
 who consistently speak of it under the name of 
 Solomon's-seal. The plant, it appears, was regarded 
 as a conspicuous example of " the doctrine of signa- 
 tures," the idea, namely, that " God Almightie, who 
 maketh grasse to growe upon the mountains and herbes 
 for the use of men, hath given to plants particular 
 sygnatures, whereby a man may read in legible char- 
 acters the use of them." The legible character of the 
 Solomon's-seal was to be found in the rootstock, which, 
 if cut across, would be seen to resemble a signum or seal. 
 Hence the plant was of " singular virtue in sealing up 
 wounds," and taketh away, says an old herbalist, " in 
 one night, or two at the most, any bruise, blacke or 
 blew spots, gotten by falls, or women's wilfulnesse in 
 stumbling upon their hasty husbands fists or such like." 
 It is curious how sometimes a choice plant will be 
 found in a single wood and yet be entirely absent else- 
 where in the neighbourhood. The beautiful snowflake, 
 with its terminal cluster of pure white flowers tipped 
 with green, is doubtless familiar to those Berkshire folk 
 who dwell on the banks of the Loddon ; but in the 
 neighbouring county of Hampshire it is supposed to be 
 unknown. There is, however, one lonely wood, in the 
 southern part of the county, where the Leucojum 
 cestivum, L., as the plant is called by botanists, may be 
 seen in flower every May. It is not indeed generally 
 distributed over the wood, but is confined to one par- 
 ticular corner, and well I remember my surprise when 
 some seasons ago I happened to light upon it. To all 
 appearances the locality was a natural one. The
 
 THE WOODS IN MAY 135 
 
 ground was wet and swampy, just such a habitat as the 
 snowflake delights in, and the plants were vigorous and 
 healthy. There was no human habitation near, and 
 several large arable fields separated the wood from the 
 highway. A few weeks later I was lunching with the 
 owner of the property, when, knowing his interest in 
 the flora of the neighbourhood, I told him of my dis- 
 covery. He seemed, I fancied, a trifle annoyed at the 
 information. He knew, he said, of one place where 
 the snowflake grew, but he thought he was the only 
 living soul who was aware of it. Sending for the large 
 tithe-map of the estate, he asked me to point out the 
 exact spot where the plant grew. I did so. Our 
 localities were identical. I promised that I would not 
 divulge the secret. The old squire is dead now and 
 lies in the family vault beneath the floor of the village 
 church, and I wonder if anyone, save myself, knows the 
 wood in Hampshire where the snowflake dwells. It is 
 in full blossom now. 
 
 There are two interesting species, to be found in 
 certain woods in May, which never fail to appeal to my 
 botanical instincts. They are both very local plants, 
 but withal abundant where they occur. One is the blue 
 cowslip or Pulmonaria angustifolia, L., and the other 
 the true oxlip of Primula elatior, Jacq. It is of the 
 oxlip that I now wish to speak. 
 
 Only in comparatively modern times has the plant 
 been recognised as a distinct species. Up to the middle 
 of the last century it was confused, at least in England, 
 with the well-known hybrid between the primrose and 
 the cowslip, not infrequently met with in our woods 
 and called " oxslip " by the village children. The true 
 oxlip, Primula elatior, Jacq., is now known to be entirely
 
 136 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 distinct, and so far as this country is concerned is con- 
 fined to certain localities in East Anglia, of which 
 Saffron Walden seems to be the headquarters. 
 
 I know of one wood or spinney in Essex, a favourite 
 haunt of my early days, where the oxlip is the character- 
 istic plant. So abundant is it in May that the spinney 
 might not inappropriately be called Oxlip Spinney. 
 Not but what other species are to be found there. The 
 primrose, it is true, is absent, as is often the case in 
 those places where the oxlip dwells, but the ordinary 
 spring flowers are abundant. Sheets of bluebells may 
 be seen, and the twayblade and the purple orchis and 
 the delicate little wood-sorrel, and there, if I remember 
 rightly, I found my first bird's-nest orchis. But the 
 pride of the spinney is the oxlip. It is a wood, more- 
 over, of literary associations. Turning the other day 
 to my old copy of Quarles' Emblems, I noticed that one 
 set of commendatory verses, placed at the beginning of 
 the volume, were written by the eccentric poet, Edward 
 Benlowes, and that he dated his strange Latin effusion 
 from " Brent Hall," in the year 1634. Brent Hall was 
 the paternal seat of the Benlowes, and the oxlip spinney 
 is situated just beyond the old family mansion and 
 formed part of the ancestral estate. It is interesting 
 to associate the wood with Quarles and Benlowes. The 
 two poets were intimate friends, and Quarles often 
 stayed at Brent Hall. He dedicated the Emblems to 
 his " mucK honoured and no less truly beloved friend, 
 Edward Benlowes, Esq re ," and according to tradition 
 he wrote many of the verses at Brent Hall. It will, 
 moreover, be remembered by lovers of old books that 
 in one early edition of the Emblems there is a quaint 
 illustration of the terrestrial globe, on which four place
 
 THE WOODS IN MAY 137 
 
 names only are inscribed. The names are Hilgay, 
 London, Roxwell and Finchfield. The Hilgay allusion 
 I am unable to interpret, but in London the book was 
 printed, at Roxwell the poet lived, and in the parish of 
 Finchfield, or Finchingfield, Brent Hall is situated. 
 The tradition, therefore, is probably right, and we may 
 think of Francis Quarles, when staying at Brent Hall, 
 as wandering in the adjacent wood and there composing 
 some of his strange conceits. And if he visited the Hall 
 in May he would not have failed to notice in the coppice, 
 to which the nightingales return every spring, the fine 
 yellow flowers of the oxlip.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CLIMBING PLANTS 
 
 T T is difficult to exaggerate the beauty of our English 
 1. hedgerows. They are a characteristic feature of 
 much of the most charming scenery, of a calm and sober 
 character, in our home counties. And it seems to be 
 a feature of comparatively modern introduction. 
 
 Macaulay tells us in a striking passage descriptive 
 of the appearance of the country-side in the middle 
 of the seventeenth century that few hedgerows were 
 to be seen. It is clear, he says, from the books 
 and maps of the period that many highways which 
 now pass through an endless succession of orchards 
 and meadows and cornfields then ran through nothing 
 but moorland and swamp and warren. In the draw- 
 ings of English landscape made in that age hardly 
 a hedgerow, he declares, is to be seen, and numerous 
 tracts, now rich in cultivation, appear as bare as 
 Salisbury Plain. 
 
 A comparison of the country-side in the south or west 
 of England with that of the fenland around Cambridge 
 or in the Isle of Ely will reveal at once how much we 
 owe to our hedgerows. Or, to take another illustration, 
 during the period of agricultural depression which 
 marked the closing decades of the last century, a 
 number of hedgerows in East Essex were stubbed up as 
 prejudicial to the growth of corn, and the appearance 
 
 138
 
 CLIMBING PLANTS 139 
 
 of the landscape was grievously impaired. In rural 
 England it will be allowed that the existence of hedge- 
 rows is a great addition to the interest and charm of the 
 country-side. 
 
 How much of that charm is due to climbing plants is 
 hardly perhaps realised. A dense growth of hedgerow 
 is always attractive, both in itself and because of the 
 number of birds which are attracted by its shelter and 
 repose ; but the interest is enhanced a hundredfold by 
 the various species of wild flowers which trail and 
 clamber over the brushwood. To see a hedgerow at its 
 best the dog-roses and honeysuckle should be in bloom 
 and the wild hop hanging in careless festoons over the 
 tangled bushes ; or perhaps later on in the season when 
 the nuts are ripe and the berries are reddening and the 
 white feathery plumes of the old-man 's-beard lend 
 grace and glory to the scene. 
 
 There are many species of climbers and they belong 
 to various orders of British plants. Some of the older 
 botanists were wont to class them all together as 
 " herbes that clamber up," which " have need to be 
 propped up for they stand not of themselves " ; but in 
 truth the capacity for climbing is no indication of 
 affinity. Various, too, are the contrivances whereby 
 climbing plants manage to fulfil their destiny. Some 
 like the hop and the honeysuckle climb by the simple 
 method of twisting ; some as the wild Clematis are leaf- 
 climbers ; others like the white bryony and some of the 
 vetches produce tendrils ; while others again develop 
 hooks and prickles like the brambles and the goose- 
 grass, or are root-climbers as the ivy. It is curious, 
 too, to notice how certain climbing plants differ in the 
 habit of revolution. Some revolve in a course opposed
 
 140 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 to that of the sun or to the hands of a watch ; others 
 loyally follow the sun ; and a few individuals like 
 the feeble woody nightshade or bittersweet twine 
 indifferently in either direction. 
 
 The wild hop invariably follows the course of the sun. 
 So does the honeysuckle, which seems to be the only 
 English climber which actually twines round the 
 trunks of trees. Often, as Gerard remarks, " it wind- 
 eth it selfe so straight and hard about that it leaveth 
 his print upon those things so wrapped." Hence its 
 name of woodbine, common in old authors, which well 
 describes this habit. There is perhaps no hedgerow 
 creeper which appealed so strongly to our forefathers. 
 Did not Shakespeare declare in the Midsummer's Night's 
 Dream, 
 
 " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 
 Where oxlips, and the nodding violet grows ; 
 Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine"? 
 
 And in The Compleat Angler, it will be remembered, our 
 honest fisherman more than once takes refuge from the 
 heat of the day " in the cool shade of a sweet honey- 
 suckle hedge." 
 
 Of the true tendril-bearing plants we have several 
 examples in the British flora, the most conspicuous of 
 which is Bryonia dioica, L., or the white bryony. The 
 tendrils are highly elastic and enable the plant to retain 
 its hold in the most stormy weather. Darwin tells us 
 that on several occasions he went out on purpose dur- 
 ing a gale to " watch a bryony growing in an exposed 
 hedge, with its tendrils attached to the surrounding 
 bushes ; and as the thick and thin branches were 
 tossed to and fro by the wind the tendrils, had they not
 
 CLIMBING PLANTS 141 
 
 been excessively elastic, would instantly have been torn 
 off and the plant thrown prostrate. But as it was the 
 bryony safely rode out the gale, and with a long range 
 of cable ahead to serve as a spring as she surges to the 
 storm." It is an elegant plant the only representa- 
 tive among our wild species of the cucumber tribe 
 with its vine-like habit and large pale leaves and 
 greenish-white flowers, succeeded by clusters of crimson 
 berries, which are very conspicuous and ornamental in 
 late summer. It is, moreover, an interesting species 
 because of the part it played in mediaeval superstition. 
 It is still known as mandrake in the Isle of Wight and 
 elsewhere, and was formerly largely used in herbalism. 
 An old herbalist informs us " how idle drones, that have 
 little or nothing to do but eat and drink, have bestowed 
 some of their time in carving the roots of bryony, form- 
 ing them to the shape of men and women, which falsify- 
 ing practice hath confirmed the error amongst the 
 simple and unlearned people, who have taken them 
 upon their report to be the true mandrakes." The 
 root of the bryony grows to a great size, and "the 
 Queen's chiefe surgion Mr William Godorous, a very 
 curious and learned gentleman," once showed Gerard 
 " a root thereof, that waied half an hundredweight and 
 of the bignes of a child of a yeare old." 
 
 Of evergreen climbers we have only two examples 
 among out~native species, " the ivy never sear," which 
 cannot be regarded as a hedgerow plant, and the wild 
 madder. The madder is a hook-climber and clambers 
 over rocks and bushes by means of recurved prickles 
 on the stem and leaves. It is mostly found in the 
 neighbourhood of the sea and is common along the 
 Undercliff in the Isle of Wight. I also remember
 
 142 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 seeing it growing abundantly in a similar situation 
 between Lyme Regis and Pinny, on the coast of 
 Devonshire. The goose-grass or cleavers, a near 
 relative of the madder, very common along our 
 hedgerows, also possesses hooked bristles. The 
 brambles, as is well known, are armed with formid- 
 able prickles, and so are some of the wild roses, 
 which enable them to climb over the highest hedge- 
 rows, where they put forth in the June sunlight their 
 exquisite flowers. 
 
 But of all our climbing plants which lend grace and 
 beauty to the country-side the most conspicuous is the 
 wild Clematis or old-man's-beard, which, when the 
 roses are over, deck with the hoary plumes of its seed- 
 vessels the autumn hedgerows. Gerard, with happy 
 inspiration, called the plant " the Traveller's Joy," 
 because " of its decking and adorning wayes and 
 hedges where people travel." After the clusters of 
 white flowers come, as he says, " great tufts of flat 
 seeds, each seed having a fine white plume like a feather 
 fastened to it, which maketh in the winter a goodly 
 shew, covering the hedges white all over with his 
 feather-like tops." The traveller's joy has a curious 
 method of climbing. It is a leaf -climber, using its 
 petioles or leaf-stalks as a means of attaching itself to 
 the stems and branches of other plants. In winter the 
 blades of the leaves drop off, leaving the clasping petioles 
 attached to the branches, which then have the appear- 
 ance of true tendrils. It is a local plant, entirely 
 absent in some districts and very abundant in others. 
 In the chalk districts of Hampshire it is very abundant, 
 and the hedgerows never look more beautiful, except, 
 of course, when the dog-roses are in bloom, than in late
 
 CLIMBING PLANTS 143 
 
 harvest-time, when the crimson hips and haws are 
 ripening and the berries of the white and the black 
 bryonies are hanging in scarlet clusters, and the whole 
 brushwood is festooned with the white plumes of the 
 traveller's joy.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 WHITE VARIETIES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
 
 THERE is a strange fascination associated with 
 the discovery of white blossoms of flowers 
 usually coloured. Sometimes, as with white heather, 
 an accession of good fortune is commonly supposed to 
 attend it. But, apart from the superstitions of the 
 vulgar, the interest among botanists and lovers of our 
 native flora in finding a white specimen of a blue or 
 purple flower is well known. It is specially noticeable 
 in the writings of the old herbalists, who, after the 
 manner of their age, are always on the look-out for 
 freaks and anomalies. Not infrequently, indeed, they 
 treat as distinct species the white varieties of such 
 plants as the sweet-scented violet and the nettle-leaved 
 bell-flowers. Thus John Gerard, speaking of the white 
 " hather," says : " There is another kinde that differeth 
 not from the precedent, saving that this plant bringeth 
 forth floures as white as snow, wherein consisteth the 
 difference : wherefore we may call it Dwarfe Heath 
 with white floures," and he mentions that this species 
 " groweth upon the downes neere unto Gravesend." 
 Writing on Prunella or self-heal, a purple-flowered 
 labiate, common in our pastures and on wayside wastes 
 in summer-time, and formerly much used in village 
 medicine, Gerard gives a separate woodcut of the white- 
 flowering variety, and adds : "I have found some 
 
 144
 
 WHITE VARIETIES OF BRITISH PLANTS 145 
 
 plants of this kinde in Essex neere unto Heningham 
 Castle." 
 
 A moment's reflection will remind us that these white 
 specimens of flowers are usually of plants whose floral 
 colouring is blue or red, and seldom or never yellow. 
 Who, for instance, ever found a white variety of butter- 
 cup or wild daffodil or St John's wort ? Among the 
 thousands of celandines that star our hedge-banks in 
 early spring a white specimen is unknown. Later on 
 the kingcups will be golden in the swampy meadows, 
 and the Iris or yellow flag will put forth its blossoms on 
 the banks of the river, but you will search in vain for 
 a white specimen. The coarse yellow Composites, the 
 ragworts and hawkweeds, which add such brilliancy to 
 our hedgerows in late summer and autumn, never in- 
 dulge in such vagaries as to assume a white habit. And 
 the reason is not far to seek, if we accept the theory 
 of our masters. The earliest petals, it seems, were 
 flattened stamens, and since stamens are mostly yellow, 
 the flowers were yellow likewise. Then some of them 
 became white ; after that, in the course of ages, a few 
 of them grew to be red or purple ; and finally a com- 
 paratively small number acquired various shades of 
 lilac, mauve, violet or blue. So wrote Grant Allen in 
 his interesting book on the colours of flowers. But, as 
 he points out, plants, like men, sometimes show a 
 tendency to fall back to a lower stage of development. 
 This tendency, when it affects only a few individuals, 
 may be spoken of as reversion or relapse. Now 
 primary yellow flowers, like the buttercups and poten- 
 tillas, show little or no tendency in a state of nature to 
 vary in colour, for the simple reason that they have 
 never passed through any earlier stage to which they
 
 146 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 can relapse. White flowers, again, seldom vary, 
 though now and again there is a tendency to revert to 
 the earlier stage of yellow. Thus the wild radish, 
 which has normally a white or pale lilac flower, will 
 sometimes be found on the seashore with yellow petals, 
 and not long since there was sent me from the neigh- 
 bourhood of Winchester a specimen of the wild privet 
 with distinctly yellow flowers. 
 
 In some instances it would seem that the colour of a 
 species has not yet had time to fix itself. A striking 
 example is the beautiful little milkwort, so abundant 
 on some of our chalk downs. White, pink and blue 
 flowers seem almost equally common. Here pink may 
 fairly be regarded as the normal hue, while the white 
 is doubtless due to reversion and the blue to progres- 
 sive modification. The same explanation is probably 
 right with regard to the wild columbine. The old 
 botanist, Robert Turner, records having found "both 
 the white and the purple growing wilde in our meadows 
 in Hampshire, in a place called Gassen mead in Hoi- 
 shot," and I have frequently found blue specimens near 
 Petersfield. The wild larkspur is another illustration, 
 and the flowers vary between pink and white and blue. 
 
 It is seldom, however, that we find any species of 
 wild flower habitually producing this range of colour. 
 Usually in a wild state the reversion is simply to white. 
 I have already alluded to white heather, and indeed 
 all the purple heaths show a like tendency. The same 
 is true of the beautiful pink musk-mallow, not un- 
 common along our Hampshire hedgerows, and of the 
 soapwort, a rare and handsome species. All the Ger- 
 aniums occasionally produce white or very pale flowers, 
 and with the common stork's-bill the tendency is quite
 
 WHITE VARIETIES OF BRITISH PLANTS 147 
 
 marked. White specimens of the purple knapweed are 
 not infrequently met with, and also of spear-thistle and 
 of the common centaury. The handsome red spur- 
 valerian has contracted a like habit, and a botanist of 
 the eighteenth century noticed some noble plants with 
 white flowers on the venerable walls of Winchester 
 Cathedral. Till within the last few years this variety 
 maintained its position on the south transept ; now, 
 while the normal red blossoms are conspicuous, the 
 white-flowering plants have disappeared. It used also 
 to flourish on the old walls of Yarmouth Castle, in the 
 Isle of Wight. 
 
 It is, however, strange as it may seem, with the more 
 highly developed blue flowers that this reversion to 
 white is mostly seen. A notable instance is the sweet- 
 smelling violet, where in some districts, as in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Plymouth and in the Isle of Wight, the 
 white variety is the prevailing form. In springtime, 
 when the woods are carpeted with the wild hyacinth or 
 bluebell, it is nothing uncommon to find a few plants 
 with white flowers. In turning over the sheets of my 
 herbarium I noticed quite a large number of white 
 specimens of blue-flowering species. Among them 
 may be mentioned the hairbell, the nettle-leaved bell- 
 flower, the clustered bell-flower, the wild scabious, the 
 viper's bugloss and the autumnal gentian. The round- 
 headed rampion (Phyteuma orbicularia, L.), a choice 
 and striking species with deep blue flowers, sometimes 
 adopts the same habit. It is rare in Hampshire, but 
 it grows in several places on the downs and on Old 
 Winchester Hill, above the Meon Valley, where a white 
 specimen may occasionally be found. 
 
 It is still more curious that this habit of relapse
 
 148 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 should be found among the British orchids, the most 
 highly developed of our entomophilous plants. There 
 is much in connection with this fascinating order that 
 is obscure, including the strange colouring of some of 
 the species. Why, for instance, should the twayblade, 
 abundant in our Hampshire woods, and the frog-orchis, 
 common on the downs about Winchester, have deliber- 
 ately adopted, as their normal colouring, a green or 
 yellowish-green ? But, not to enter upon the wide sub- 
 ject of degeneration, the tendency of individual plants 
 of several species to relapse in colour to white blossoms 
 is well recognised among botanists. White specimens 
 of the purple meadow-orchis and of the sweet-scented 
 orchis are found every year. On the down of the Isle 
 of Wight, where the very rare green-man orchis grows, 
 I found many pure white specimens of the spotted 
 orchis. The early purple orchis and the pyramidal 
 orchis both show the same tendency. But more inter- 
 esting is the case of the bee-orchis. In an old list of 
 Hampshire plants, made in the eighteenth century, the 
 compiler, who afterwards became Dean of Winchester, 
 specially mentions a down near Petersfield where white 
 specimens were to be found. A fine plate represents 
 the strange variety, and a note is added to the effect 
 that the plant is " a new one not found in any other 
 work. ' ' More than a hundred years later it so happened 
 that I became vicar of the parish in which the locality 
 in question is situated, and one day towards the end of 
 June I climbed with eager steps the steep ascent, 
 wondering whether the white bee-orchis still main- 
 tained its old position. The down was indeed a rich 
 one as regards its flora. The fragrant orchis very 
 fine specimens, some, too, with white flowers was
 
 WHITE VARIETIES OF BRITISH PLANTS 149 
 
 abundant, and there were hundreds of plants of the 
 scarce and delicate musk-orchis (Herminium monar- 
 chis, Br.), the flowers of which smell like sandal-wood. 
 The bee-orchis, too, was plentiful, and before long I 
 came across the object of my search. There was the 
 variety albida, conspicuous with its pure white sepals 
 among its more gaily coloured companions, and grow- 
 ing, not in isolation, but distributed in fair numbers 
 over the slope. Indeed the strange and rare variety 
 gave a distinct character to the down, already dis- 
 tinguished as the home of the white Gymnadenia and 
 the fragrant musk-orchis. Every summer I visited the 
 little colony of plants, and once or twice since I have 
 left the district I have returned at the right season to 
 see my old parishioners on the windswept downs.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 WINTER FOLIAGE 
 
 IT is naturally in the winter-time that evergreens 
 are most conspicuous. For though, as old Gerard 
 says, they " groweth greene both summer and winter," 
 yet during the summer months their dark, rich foliage 
 is merged in the prevailing wealth of verdure. But as 
 the season advances, and the autumnal gales sweep 
 bare the branches of deciduous trees, then do our ever- 
 green species show themselves in their full pride and 
 glory. The beauty of a winter landscape owes a great 
 deal to its yews and hollies and ivy and Scotch firs. 
 But besides these familiar species the British flora can 
 boast of nearly thirty kinds of indigenous evergreens. 
 Nearly half of these, it is true, belong to the Ericacea, or 
 heath-family, and, except the common heath, the cow- 
 berry and the cranberry, are comparatively rare or con- 
 fined to a few localities. Still, the bearberry is not un- 
 common in Scotland, where also the marsh Andromeda, 
 the trailing Azalea and perhaps the blue Menziesia 
 may be found. Ireland, too, can claim the beautiful 
 Arbutus or strawberry-tree, which is said to be abund- 
 ant in the neighbourhood of the Lakes of Killarney, and 
 St Dabeoc's heath, which flourishes in many bogs in 
 Connemara and Mayo. 
 
 In addition, however, to these rare or local species, 
 our woods and forests in England, and even our humble 
 
 150
 
 WINTER FOLIAGE 151 
 
 hedgerows, can show many an example of evergreen 
 plants to gladden the eyes in winter-time. Scattered 
 throughout the Hampshire woods and coppices, at 
 Selborne, at Droxford and elsewhere, the spurge-laurel, 
 somewhat resembling a dwarf rhododendron with its 
 crown of glossy leaves, is frequently met with. The wild 
 privet, too, is abundant in many places and forms a 
 good growth of underwood in sheltered situations. In 
 hedgerows the privet bush is often conspicuous by 
 reason of its clusters of shining berries, on which the 
 bullfinch loves to feed. There are few more striking 
 effects of colour in winter-time, when snow is on the 
 ground, than a cock bullfinch, with its bright crimson 
 breast, feeding on the jet-black berries of the evergreen 
 privet. In some parts of England the wild madder, 
 called " evergreen cliver " in the Isle of Wight, is very 
 conspicuous, trailing with its dark green glossy leaves, 
 arranged in whorls usually of four or five, over the bare 
 brushwood. All along the undercliff it is abundant 
 " the most that ever I saw," wrote Dr William Turner 
 in the year 1551, " is in the Isle of Wight," where it en- 
 livens the monotony of the winter landscape by the 
 exuberant profusion with which it clothes the broken 
 ground and crumbling rocks of that attractive district. 
 Another humble evergreen is the wild periwinkle, which 
 may often be seen covering with a carpet of deepest 
 verdure the slopes and hollows of copses and wild 
 grounds. In similar situations will not infrequently be 
 seen shrubs of the knee-holme or butcher's-broom, well 
 described by an old herbalist as " a low woody plant, 
 having divers small branches or rather stems, of the 
 height of a foot, whereupon are set many leaves like 
 unto those of the Myrtle-tree, but sharpe and pricking
 
 152 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 at the point. The fruit groweth upon the middle rib 
 of the leafe, greene at the first, and red as Corall when 
 it is ripe, like those of Asparagus but bigger." On 
 the cliffs near Moulin Huet Bay, in Guernsey, the 
 knee-holme is remarkably abundant, and some years 
 bears a prodigious crop of bright red berries, which 
 make a brave show among the huge boulders of dark 
 grey rock clothed with lichens of the most brilliant 
 colouring. 
 
 But of all our native evergreens the holly, the Scotch 
 fir, the yew and the ivy are the commonest and most 
 conspicuous ; and of these, from the standpoint of 
 beauty, the foremost position must be allotted to the 
 holly. Evelyn calls it an " incomparable tree " and 
 waxes eloquent over his holly hedge at Say's Court. 
 " Is there under heaven," he exclaims, " a more glorious 
 and refreshing object of the kind than an impregnable 
 hedge of about four hundred feet in length, nine feet 
 high, and five feet in diameter, which I can show in my 
 garden at any time of the year, glittering with its armed 
 and varnished leaves, the taller standards at orderly 
 distances, blushing with their natural coral ? It mocks 
 at the rudest assaults of weather, beasts, or hedge- 
 beaters." But more beautiful than even " this rare 
 hedge, the boast of Evelyn's villa," is the holly-tree 
 growing in its native soil. Formerly this species was 
 more abundant in a wild state than it is now, and many 
 places in England are named after the " Holme, Holly, 
 or Hulver tree." At Holmwood, in Surrey, beneath 
 the slopes of Leith Hill, the holly is still plentiful, and 
 presents a fine sight in winter-time, especially in seasons 
 when berries are abundant. The same is true of the 
 New Forest, where, as Gilpin says, " mixed with oak or
 
 WINTER FOLIAGE 153 
 
 ash or other trees of the wood, it contributes to form 
 the most beautiful scenes, blending itself with the trunks 
 and skeletons of the winter, or with the varied greens of 
 summer." From time immemorial the holly, with the 
 ivy and mistletoe another native evergreen has 
 been associated with Christmas, as we are reminded in 
 the mediaeval ballad : 
 
 " Christmastide 
 Comes in like a bride, 
 With holly and ivy clad" ; 
 
 and many of us, with Lord Tennyson, have maintained 
 the ancient traditions, when 
 
 " Again at Christmas did we weave 
 The holly round the Christmas hearth." 
 
 The yew-tree is not far behind the holly in the beauty 
 of its winter garb and in its sacred associations. From 
 the earliest times it has appealed to the imagination of 
 man. But unlike the holly it has not allied itself to 
 thoughts of gladness. The " dismal yew," as the poets 
 call it, " with its thousand years of gloom," has far 
 other memories. In mediaeval times it was often 
 carried in solemn procession on Palm Sunday, in which 
 connection some ancient writers speak of it under the 
 name of "Palm." It was associated, too, with death and 
 burial, and with churchyards. Shakespeare alludes to 
 some use made of it in this connection in Twelfth Night : 
 
 " My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 
 Oh ! prepare it." 
 
 On the other hand, most people will agree with Charles 
 Waterton in his admiration of the yew-tree. Charming, 
 he well says, is its appearance after the sun has passed
 
 154 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 the autumnal equinox. The delicate crimson of its 
 fruit, with the dark green leaves behind it, present as 
 pleasing an effect as any to be met with in a winter's 
 ramble. Moreover, the song-thrush and the mistletoe- 
 thrush love to feed upon its berries, and the golden- 
 crested wren to play among its branches. And in prais- 
 ing the yew-tree we must not forget its humble relative, 
 the lonely juniper, which gives distinction to many a 
 chalk down and barren hill-side. The dark, glaucous 
 hue of its foliage can be recognised at some distance, 
 and, like the yew, it also bears berries, " greene at the 
 first, but afterward blacke, declining to blewness, of a 
 good savor, and sweet in taste." 
 
 The wealth of our winter foliage is further increased 
 by the extraordinary luxuriance of ivy, which " climeth 
 everywhere," on trees, old buildings, and walls, and 
 often covers wide stretches of ground. Belonging to 
 that order of plants which, as an old writer says, " have 
 need to be propped up, for they stand not of themselves, " 
 the ivy is seen in its greatest perfection when it has 
 taken possession of some spreading pollard-tree. Then 
 it is that, " sending forth a multitude of little boughes 
 every way, whereby, as it were, with armes it creepeth 
 and wandereth far about, and bearing small and mossie 
 flowers, which in due course produce bundles of black 
 berries," the birds of the air love to lodge in the branches 
 of it. It is not the " owl " only that seeks the shelter 
 of the " ivy-bush," or, in spite of the assertion in an 
 ancient carol, that deigns to feed upon its berries. 
 When the haws along the hedgerows have disappeared, 
 and the berries of yew and privet, of mountain-ash 
 and mistletoe have been consumed, then do thrushes 
 and blackbirds and wood-pigeons resort to the ivy
 
 WINTER FOLIAGE 155 
 
 bush for food. And as for a snug and sheltered 
 retreat in winter-time, when the silent snow possesses 
 the earth, there is no place more secure or more sought 
 after than the deep recesses of an "ivy-mantled" 
 tree.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 EARLY SPRING AT VEVEY 
 
 FOR the first ten or twelve days after the thaw 
 there was little evidence, in spite of the brilliant 
 sunshine, of the awakening of spring. One striking 
 plant, however, was in full blossom in the woods and 
 on the hill-side. The hellebore (Helleborus fcetidus, L.), 
 known also as bear's-foot and setterwort, a large, bushy 
 plant with deeply divided leaves and great clusters of 
 pale green flowers edged with purple, was scattered here 
 and there over the slopes. It is a rare plant with us, at 
 least in the south of England, but it still flourishes in 
 Gilbert White's old locality on Selborne Hill, where it 
 sometimes puts forth its blossoms as early as January. 
 But here, in the uplands above Vevey, on the rocks of 
 the mountain gorges, in the woods and copses, it is 
 common enough. I first noticed it, to my delight, on 
 the perpendicular rock above the Castle of Chillon, and 
 afterwards found it to be the characteristic plant of the 
 uplands in early spring. 
 
 On 22nd February I climbed the mountain which 
 rises above Blonay, known as Les Pleiades, up which a 
 rack and pinion railway now runs to the summit, but 
 the line is not open during the winter months. It was 
 a lovely spring morning. The sun was shining brightly, 
 the air was still, the blue waters of the lake sparkled 
 below, and not a cloud rested on the snow-capped Dent 
 
 156
 
 EARLY SPRING AT VEVEY 157 
 
 du Midi. On the steep banks of loose debris which the 
 winter's frost had flaked off the grey rocks bright-eyed 
 lizards were darting about ; several tortoise-shell and 
 brimstone butterflies were on the wing ; and the yellow 
 coltsfoot was just coming into flower on the wayside. 
 Passing a woodman busy in barking a fallen tree, I re- 
 marked on the beauty of the morning. " Oui, mon- 
 sieur," he replied. " Le printemps s'annonce." The 
 woodman was right. The top of the Pleiades was still 
 covered with deep snow, but just below the snow-line 
 several tiny gentians were opening their exquisite ultra- 
 marine petals to the sun. Descending the mountain, I 
 found on a warm, sheltered bank the first blue S cilia (S. 
 italicd) of the season, and in the Blonay orchards a few 
 white crocuses (C. albiflorus, Kit.) were showing under 
 the apple-trees. Spring had indeed declared itself. 
 
 From this moment the evidences of spring became 
 more pronounced every day. By the end of the first 
 week in March wild flowers were plentiful. It was 
 pleasant to come across familiar English species 
 blossoming in abundance on the hill-sides. The 
 common coltsfoot made a brave show in long belts of 
 golden flowers beside the mountain paths. The banks 
 were bright with Wordsworth's little celandine, with 
 primroses, with blue and white violets. On the loose 
 stone walls the blue veronica was plentiful, and the 
 attractive little Draba verna, L., and the maidenhair 
 spleenwort fern. In the vineyards, which clothe the 
 hill-sides above the lake, the ground in places was 
 covered with the common chickweed, the garden spurge 
 and the purple dead-nettle. But pleasanter still was 
 it to come across some of our choicer English species, in 
 comparative abundance. I have already mentioned
 
 158 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Helleborus fcetidus, L., so conspicuous on the wooded 
 uplands. A far rarer English plant, confined, indeed, 
 to a single locality in the county of Dorset, is the 
 beautiful vernal snowflake (Leucojum vernum, L.). In 
 appearance it is like a large snowdrop, marked on the 
 edges of the pure white petals with touches of green. 
 I had noticed bunches of this delicate spring flower in 
 the Vevey market and had learnt that it grew wild in 
 the neighbourhood. On 2Qth February, in the romantic 
 Gorge du Chauderon, which runs from Les Avants down 
 to Montreux, I at length saw the plant in its native 
 home. At one spot, in the deepest part of the gorge, 
 where the cataract thunders below, and far above just 
 a streak of blue sky appears, the lovely snowflake 
 occupied the almost perpendicular face of the rock. It 
 was a situation worthy of the species. Long festoons 
 of ivy hung from the deep crevasses ; here and there 
 in the wide, gaping fissures a sapling of birch or yew 
 managed to maintain a hold ; the wall of rock was 
 green with emerald moss or fronds of hart's-tongue fern, 
 and there, in an almost inaccessible position, the colony 
 of snowflakes flourished. The flowers were past their 
 prime, but the sight was not one easily to be forgotten. 
 The Daphne Mezereum, L., with fragrant pink flowers 
 appearing before the leaves early in the spring, has long 
 been a favourite shrub of mine. It is very rare as a 
 wild plant in England, although it is not infrequently 
 seen in cottage gardens. I searched for it in vain for 
 many years, until at last I came across several fine 
 plants in a Hampshire wood. Some flowering twigs 
 of this handsome shrub I also noticed for sale in the 
 Vevey market, and the peasant woman assured me 
 that the plant was wild and grew in some damp woods
 
 EARLY SPRING AT VEVEY 159 
 
 near Chatel St Denis. For several weeks there were 
 bunches of the mezereum for sale in the market, and it 
 was evidently not uncommon in the neighbourhood. I 
 was fortunate in finding several plants in full flower in 
 a wood on Mont-Pelerin. One other choice English 
 plant to be met with in abundance on the shores of 
 Lake Leman is the dark blue grape-hyacinth (Muscari 
 racemosum, Miller). It is exceedingly scarce in 
 England, but about Vevey it is everywhere on walls, 
 in pastures, on railway embankments, even as a weed 
 in vineyards. A grassy slope close to St Martin's 
 Church was blue with it about the middle of March, and 
 so was the railway embankment between Territet and 
 Villeneuve. 
 
 But if some of the early Swiss wild flowers are familiar 
 friends, others are strangers to our indigenous British 
 flora. A botanical ramble among the orchards and 
 vineyards that cover the mountain uplands above the 
 shores of Lake Leman will quickly remind us that we 
 are not in England. The solitary scilla in flower on the 
 sheltered bank above Blonay on 22nd February was 
 only the herald of a countless host which within a week 
 or ten days was to cover the country-side. We are 
 familiar with the lovely little plant in our English 
 gardens as one of the first to gladden our eyes in the 
 early days of spring. But here, on the slopes above 
 Vevey, especially about St Lgier and Blonay, it is 
 abundant. It may be seen by the wayside, on the slop- 
 ing banks, in the orchards under the fruit-trees, every- 
 where. It was in full blossom this spring during the 
 first week in March, and it presented a truly lovely 
 sight. Never shall I forget one steep bank not far 
 from Chateau Blonay, which was covered with scillas
 
 i6o THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 and primroses. The combination of blue and yellow 
 on the soft, green, mossy slope was very attractive. It 
 was curious how in the orchards the scilla loved to 
 bloom under the shelter of the cherry-trees. In many 
 places the ground was blue with them. This partiality 
 they shared in common with the wild crocuses which in 
 tens of thousands dotted the short turf. As the specific 
 name (C. albiflorus, Kit.) indicates, the flowers were 
 mostly white, although in some places blue specimens 
 were almost equally common. The wild crocuses were 
 as plentiful as daisies on an English lawn. 
 
 Even more beautiful than the Scillas and crocuses 
 beneath the orchard trees were the wild Hepaticas in 
 the woods. By the end of February the plant was in 
 blossom in the Gorge du Chauderon, on the wooded 
 slopes above the Castle of Chillon and in some of the 
 copses at the mouth of the Rhone Valley. In our 
 gardens at home it is one of our most familiar spring 
 flowers, but it is difficult to exaggerate its beauty when 
 seen in its native surroundings. I first met with it in 
 a steep wood not far from Chillon, where it was flourish- 
 ing in company with primroses. No other species, 
 except the spurge laurel, was in flower ; the wood was 
 given over to primroses and Hepaticas. A few of the 
 Hepatica flowers were pink, and by much searching a 
 white specimen might be found, but the prevailing 
 colour was an exquisite sky-blue. Never have I seen 
 a lovelier sight in early spring than that steep and 
 rocky wood illuminated with myriads of pale primroses 
 and blue Hepaticas. A few weeks later the Narcissi 
 would be in flower at Les Avants, and later on the full 
 glory of the Alpine flora burst forth in the Swiss valleys 
 and pastures ; but the delicate beauty of the early wild
 
 EARLY SPRING AT VEVEY 161 
 
 flowers at the first break of spring the gentians, 
 Scillas, snowflakes, grape-hyacinths and Hepaticas is 
 more than sufficient to justify the enthusiasm with 
 which Rousseau speaks of the delight of botanising on 
 the lovely shore of the Lake of Geneva.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 
 
 r I "HERE is a peculiar fascination about an old 
 A house in which a great man has lived or died. 
 It is akin to the charm of a rare volume with an inter- 
 esting biography. The London County Council has 
 done well in placing tablets on certain houses associated 
 with distinguished citizens. We like to be reminded of 
 Dr Johnson in Fleet Street and of Thomas Carlyle at 
 Chelsea. The custom has been followed in other 
 places. It is not unusual, even in country villages, to 
 see a tablet affixed to a dwelling-house commemorating 
 some former occupier. 
 
 The same association gives an additional interest to 
 many official residences. How full of biographical 
 reminiscences is Lambeth Palace, or the Deanery of 
 Westminster. How many pilgrimages have been made 
 to George Herbert's home at Bemerton, to Keble's 
 Vicarage at Hursley, to Charles Kingsley's rectory at 
 Eversley. So with many prebendal residences which, 
 in cathedral cities, often cluster together beneath the 
 shelter of the old minster. It is probable that the 
 greater number of the more famous figures in English 
 Church history since the Reformation were, at some 
 period of their career, canons of a cathedral. But, 
 strange as it may seem, it is not often possible to con- 
 nect a prebendary with any particular residence. It 
 
 162
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 163 
 
 is enough that such an individual, distinguished in his 
 lifetime as a preacher or a divine, was once a member 
 of the Cathedral body : the residence he occupied is 
 forgotten. 
 
 I was struck with this anomaly when, ten years ago, 
 I became a member of the Chapter of Winchester. 
 Quitting my old rectory on the banks of the Meon, I 
 took up my residence in the Cathedral Close. There 
 are few more peaceful spots to be found anywhere. It 
 occupies the precincts of St Swithun's Priory. It is 
 protected on the north side by what Tennyson calls 
 " the long low minster," and on the south and west by 
 the lofty monastic walls. Its ancient gateway, its 
 mediaeval remains, its prebendal residences scattered 
 about the enclosure, its fine trees and quiet lawns, give 
 it a sense of calm tranquillity that cannot be gainsaid. 
 It is a very haunt of ancient peace. The Close 
 possesses, in addition to the Deanery and the Porter's 
 Lodge, and the picturesque, timbered dwelling-house 
 known as Cheney Court, ten houses for the use of pre- 
 bendaries. Until the middle of the last century the 
 number was twelve, but in 1840 the Capitular body was 
 reduced from twelve to five prebendaries, when two of 
 the smaller and less convenient houses were pulled down. 
 These ten existing houses doubtless assumed their pre- 
 sent form soon after the Restoration. Great havoc was 
 wrought in the Close during the period of the Common- 
 wealth, and it became necessary to rebuild several of 
 the houses, while all of them needed much restoration. 
 The actual date of this work may, in some cases, be 
 seen on the houses themselves, and other indications 
 point to their completion in late Jacobean times. 
 
 I had not long been settled in my beautiful residence,
 
 164 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 with its panelled rooms, its wide, dark oak staircase, its 
 fine plastered cornice-work of fruit and flowers en- 
 riched with heraldic shields, its enormous roof-beams, 
 which formerly had sheltered the Pilgrims' Hall, before 
 the thought of my predecessors began to occupy my 
 mind. A large number of prebendaries, some two 
 hundred and fifty, had lived in the Close since the dis- 
 solution of the monastery. All of them, it is true, were 
 not famous men. But the names of some are enshrined 
 in the Dictionary of National Biography ; a few were 
 known in the world of letters ; others were men of 
 character and distinction in their day and generation. 
 I began to wonder in which of the houses my more 
 celebrated predecessors had lived. Who had occupied 
 the pleasant residence which had fallen to my lot ? 
 Whose coat-of-arms, in seventeenth-century glass, 
 figured above the doorway leading into the garden ? 
 Several rectors of Droxford, my old living in the Meon 
 Valley, had become prebendaries of the Cathedral 
 Nicholas Preston, and Dr Hawkins, and Archdeacon 
 Fulham, and William Garnier in which houses did 
 they reside ? So with that interesting group of Lati- 
 tudinarian divines Dr Alured Clarke, Dr Sykes, Dr 
 Balguy and others which residences did they respec- 
 tively occupy ? Or John Mulso, the lifelong and intim- 
 ate friend of Gilbert White it would be interesting 
 to know in which house the prebendary was wont to 
 receive the great naturalist of Selborne. Or Dr Wart on, 
 the celebrated Headmaster of Winchester College and 
 the friend of Dr Johnson which was his residence, in 
 which he produced the famous editions of Pope and 
 Dryden ? Above all, which was the house occupied by 
 Dr William Hawkins ? For Dr Hawkins was the son-
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 165 
 
 in-law of Izaak Walton ; and where Dr Hawkins lived, 
 there during the last seven years of his long life Izaak 
 Walton lived with him (whenever he was in residence 
 at the Cathedral) ; there the old fisherman made his 
 will ; and there he died. Which, I say, was the house in 
 which Izaak Walton lived and died ? That he died in 
 the Close of Winchester was, of course, known. That 
 he died in the residence of Dr Hawkins was also known. 
 But which was Dr Hawkins' residence ? 
 
 To these and similar questions I could find no answer. 
 No man knew. Not even the faintest tradition re- 
 mained. All knowledge on the subject had passed 
 away as a tale that is told. But I did not abandon my 
 inquiries. The Chapter-books in the Cathedral library 
 were diligently searched, but in vain. Other old books 
 and documents yielded no better results. The houses 
 themselves I carefully examined, hoping to find some 
 trace or indication of their former occupants. In a few 
 instances a coat-of-arms, emblazoned in glass, or carved 
 in oak, told its own tale ; and now and again some initials 
 cut in stone or wood revealed a probable occupier. 
 But very little could I discover. Indeed I had almost 
 ceased to expect that it would ever be possible to 
 associate particular residences with the prebendaries 
 who had occupied them. 
 
 However, a short time ago, the unexpected hap- 
 pened. One afternoon the librarian of the Cathedral 
 brought over to my residence a tall, parchment-bound 
 ledger-book, which he had found among a lot of 
 " rubbish " stowed away in an old oak settle in the 
 south transept of the Cathedral. It had the words 
 " Wainscott Book " written in faded ink on the cover, 
 and it contained many entries in a difficult seventeenth-
 
 166 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 century handwriting. I was laid up at the time and 
 my good friend thought that possibly the old ledger- 
 book might amuse me. He was not mistaken. The 
 merest glance at its contents was sufficient to show that 
 here was a mine of information with regard to the pre- 
 bendal houses and their former occupants. A closer 
 examination made the use and purposes of the book 
 clear. It had been decided at the time of the Restora- 
 tion that, while the houses in the Close should be re- 
 built " at the general charge of the Church," yet that 
 
 " all manner of wainscott of the several houses of 
 Mr Deane and the severall prebendaries shal be made 
 and finished at their owne proper charges respectively, 
 by the particular owner of every such house, they or 
 their executors to be paid for the same by their suc- 
 cessors abating one fowerth parte of the charge 
 thereof." 
 
 This was decided by the Dean and Chapter on ist 
 December 1662, in the presence of George Morley, 
 Bishop of Winchester. The newly found Wainscot 
 Book proved to be the account-book, kept by the 
 Chapter clerk, consequent upon this arrangement. It 
 gives (under the headings of the different houses) the 
 sum of money expended by a prebendary on wainscot 
 and other improvements and the sum " one fowerth 
 parte being deducted, according to the custom of the 
 church," to be duly paid by his successor, stating in 
 most cases the names of the said prebendaries. It is, 
 in short, the book of Fixtures, to be taken over by 
 successive occupiers of prebendal houses. Unfortun- 
 ately the record is strangely imperfect and incomplete,
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 167 
 
 and dates are sadly wanting, but such as it is, the Wain- 
 scot Book throws much interesting light upon what 
 hitherto has been a very obscure subject, and enables 
 us, in a large number of instances, to discover the names 
 of prebendaries who occupied particular houses. 
 
 The book begins with the period immediately follow- 
 ing the Restoration, although during the seventeenth 
 century six only of the twelve houses are dealt with. 
 During the eighteenth century the record, however, is 
 fairly complete, and a good deal of information has been 
 obtained. That the residences differed much in com- 
 fort and convenience is clear, for we find the Chapter 
 petitioning Charles II. to permit them so far to alter the 
 statutes of the Cathedral as to allow the prebendaries, 
 in the order of their seniority, to change houses as 
 vacancies occurred. The result of this new but most 
 reasonable arrangement was that not infrequently 
 there was a good deal of shifting of residences in the 
 Close. The senior canons naturally moved into the 
 better houses and the new-comer had to content him- 
 self with what he could get. Indeed several of the 
 residences came to be regarded simply as resting-places, 
 to be put up with for a while, until in the course of 
 time a better dwelling could be obtained. 
 
 My first endeavour, in dealing with the Wainscot 
 Book, was to discover, if possible, the residence of Dr 
 Hawkins, and therefore the house in which Izaak 
 Walton died. It would be thrilling indeed if I could 
 discover this. Every little detail in the career of the 
 old fisherman is treasured up by a large circle of en- 
 thusiastic admirers. Witness the late discussion in 
 The Times with reference to his supposed fishing-creel. 
 What would not be the excitement if the house in
 
 168 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 which he died could be identified ! Some years ago, in 
 the pages of Longman's Magazine, I recorded the result 
 of my researches with regard to Izaak Walton's con- 
 nection with Droxford. I there showed that Dr 
 Hawkins was rector of that parish as well as prebendary 
 of Winchester, and that therefore the allusions to Drox- 
 ford in Walton's will were fully accounted for ; that he 
 had lived in the old rectory, still standing on the banks 
 of the Meon, with his daughter and son-in-law ; and 
 that several of those to whom he left memorial rings 
 were parishioners of Droxford, among others, Mr 
 John Darbyshire, the curate, and Mr Francis Morley, 
 squire of the village, both of whom are buried in Drox- 
 ford church. I mentioned, of course, that it was dur- 
 ing one of Dr Hawkins' " residences " at the Cathedral 
 that Izaak Walton died ; but in which house in the 
 Close the event took place I knew not and no man knew. 
 Perhaps the Wainscot Book might reveal it. I had 
 long associated in my mind, from several trivial indica- 
 tions, the second house on the right-hand side in Dome 
 Alley as the probable residence of Dr Hawkins. Its 
 position in the Close seemed to correspond with an 
 allusion to Dr Hawkins' garden which I found in a con- 
 temporary document ; and, moreover, the initials 
 W. H., with the date 1683, cut in a stone on the north 
 side of the house, might refer to our prebendary. To 
 my great satisfaction the conjecture proved to be 
 correct. The very first entry in the Wainscot Book 
 with reference to this house was the payment by 
 
 " William Hawkins, Dr of Divinity, one of ye pre- 
 bendaries of the Cathedral Church of Winchester, to 
 Mrs Frances Preston, relict of Dr Nicholas Preston who
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 169 
 
 was predecessor to the seyd William Hawkins, for the 
 wainscott in his dwelling-house, the sum of twenty- 
 seven pounds twelve shillings fower pence halfpenny." 
 
 This was a discovery of more than passing interest. 
 Dr Nicholas Preston had been Dr Hawkins' predecessor 
 at Droxford, and he lies buried in Droxford Church ; 
 and now Dr Hawkins was to succeed to Dr Preston's 
 residence at Winchester, as he had already succeeded 
 to his rectory at Droxford. The Mrs Frances Preston 
 to whom the wainscot money was paid lies in the retro- 
 choir of the Cathedral. The date of the transaction, 
 as confirmed by the Dean and Chapter, was, as the 
 Wainscot Book shows, 28th November 1676. This 
 was the very year in which William Hawkins married 
 Ann, the only daughter of Izaak Walton. It is clear, 
 therefore, that on his marriage Dr Hawkins took posses- 
 sion of the house in Dome Alley that had formerly be- 
 longed to Dr Preston ; that there he brought home his 
 bride ; and also took his aged father-in-law to live with 
 them. It is further clear that Dr Hawkins continued 
 to reside in the same house, probably until his death in 
 1691, certainly till the year 1685, when, as the Wainscot 
 Book shows, he panelled his " new parlour " and also 
 " the Roome over it, as far as the wainscoting would 
 go." At the time of his daughter's marriage Izaak 
 Walton was in his eighty-fourth year, but he had still 
 some seven years (1676-1683) to live, and we may think 
 of him as spending this closing time 
 
 " serene and bright, 
 And calm as is a Lapland night," 
 
 with his daughter and Dr Hawkins, partly in the house 
 up Dome Alley, in Winchester Close, and partly in the
 
 170 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 old rectory at Dr oxford. In both places he was happy 
 in the society of congenial friends. At Winchester he 
 was specially fortunate. There was then living in the 
 Close, in a house to the east of the Deanery, now, un- 
 fortunately, pulled down, his relative, Thomas Ken, 
 prebendary of the Cathedral, " the poor little black 
 fellow," as Charles II. called him, the author of our 
 Morning and Evening hymns, who afterwards became 
 Bishop of Bath and Wells. There was good Bishop 
 Morley, an old friend of forty years' standing, then 
 engaged in building Wolvesey Palace, on the other side 
 of the Close walls. There was Seth Ward, a prebendary 
 of the Cathedral, living up Dome Alley, nearly opposite 
 to the residence of Dr Hawkins. And there was Dr 
 Abraham Markland, also Master of St Cross, who took 
 possession of Mr Seth Ward's house in Dome Alley in 
 1681, and who was also Walton's near neighbour at 
 Droxford, holding the adjoining parishes of Soberton 
 and Meonstoke. It is pleasant to think of this com- 
 pany of good men and to be able to associate them with 
 their respective residences in the Close. 
 
 In February, 1678, a son was born to William and 
 Ann Hawkins in the Close at Winchester, and it must 
 have been a happy occasion to Izaak Walton when, on 
 the 24th of the month, his little grandson was baptized 
 in the great Norman Font of Winchester Cathedral. 
 Later on a daughter was born and christened Ann after 
 her mother. We can imagine how the old fisherman of 
 ninety years would delight in taking one of his grand- 
 children for a " gentle walk to the river," when, from 
 the summer-house in Mr Ken's garden, he would point 
 out " the great store of trouts " in " the gliding stream." 
 On gth August 1683 Izaak Walton began to make his
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 171 
 
 will, being, he says, " this present day in the ninetyeth 
 yeare of my age, and in perfect memory for which 
 praysed be God." The will was clearly made in the 
 Close and not at Droxford, for he speaks of himself as 
 " I, Izaak Walton, the elder, of Winchester." In very 
 affectionate terms does the old man mention his " sonne 
 in law," Dr Hawkins, " whom," he says, " I love as my 
 owne sonn." In addition to substantial property, he 
 leaves to him and to " my daughter his wife," a number 
 of little mementos, including a ring each, with these 
 
 words, " Love my memory. I.W. obiit ." To Dr 
 
 Hawkins he also gives Dr Donne's Sermons, and to his 
 daughter Doctor Sibbs his Brused reed, " and alsoe all 
 my books at Winchester and Droxford and whatever 
 in those two places are or I can call mine." With 
 regard to his burial he writes : "I desire my burial 1 
 may be neare the place of my death and free from any 
 ostentation or charge but privately." The will, with 
 its " Codicell for rings," sixteen in number, was not 
 completed until 24th October, when Dr Markland was 
 fetched over from his residence on the other side of 
 Dome Alley to witness his friend's signature. Having 
 signed his will, Izaak Walton sealed the same with the 
 gold signet-ring that Dr Donne had given him, in which 
 was set "a bloodstone with the figure of the Crucified, 
 not on the Cross, but on an anchor, as the emblem of 
 hope." For some few weeks longer the old man lived, 
 when the memorable frost of December, 1683, proved 
 too much for his frail constitution, and he passed peace- 
 fully away in one of the chambers of his son-in-law's 
 residence on the I5th of the month. Four days later, 
 on igth December, his body was carried from Dr 
 Hawkins' residence, down Dome Alley, and across the
 
 172 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Close, and laid quietly to rest " without ostentation " 
 in Prior Silkstede's Chapel, in the south transept of the 
 Cathedral. A large black marble slab was afterwards 
 placed over his remains, with an inscription believed to 
 have been written by Thomas Ken ; and quite recently 
 the east window above his grave has been filled with 
 stained glass in memory of the " honest fisherman," 
 who passed the last years of his honoured life in the 
 uppermost house on the right side of Dome Alley, in 
 the Close of Winchester. 
 
 " The house next ye Dean's stable," as the Wainscot 
 Book calls No. 3 i.e. the residence adjoining the 
 mediaeval guest-house or Pilgrims' Hall, and built 
 partly within it was allotted to Dr John Nicholas, 
 Warden of College, known to all Wykehamists as the 
 builder of " School." He was appointed prebendary 
 by Bishop Morley in 1684, three months after the death 
 of Izaak Walton ; and having finished " School " in 
 1687, ne a * nce set about putting his prebendal resi- 
 dence into order. From the many points of similarity 
 between the decoration of " School " and that of No. 3, 
 it would seem that Dr Nicholas employed the same 
 architect, believed to be Sir Christopher Wren, or at 
 anyrate the same workmen. The cornice-work at the 
 top of the wide oaken staircase of No. 3, decorated 
 with the Nicholas coat-of-arms, corresponds to the 
 cornice-work of " School," and the fine oak panelling 
 is of the same pattern. Our Wainscot Book gives 
 particulars of this later work. It appears that Dr 
 Nicholas spent the sum of 73, 195. a considerable 
 sum in those days on wainscot work, giving as much 
 as 6s. 6d. a yard for the wide oak boards with which he 
 panelled "the parlor and drawing- Rome." It was
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 173 
 
 completed in 1687, as the Wainscot Book shows, the 
 same date appearing on the fine leaden guttering of the 
 house. For twenty-four years Dr Nicholas enjoyed 
 the comfort of his residence, dying in 1711, when he was 
 buried ir the Cathedral, not far from the grave of Izaak 
 Walton. The house of Dr Nicholas, as the Wainscot 
 Book reveals, was afterwards occupied by several dis- 
 tinguished prebendaries. Another College warden, 
 Dr John Cobb, held it for a short time. He was 
 followed by Mr Anthony Alsop, a classical scholar of 
 high reputation at Oxford, who, when tutor of Christ 
 Church, had published a selection of ^Esop's fables in 
 Latin verse, which Wart on, in his Essay on Pope, 
 speaks of as "exquisitely written." Indeed we are 
 told that liis skill in Latin composition was such that 
 " he was not unjustly esteemed inferior only to his 
 master Horace." He was chaplain to Bishop Tre- 
 lawny, who appointed him to the rectory of Brightwell, 
 in Berkshire, and to his prebend at Winchester. His 
 career, however, had a tragical ending. We learn from 
 The Reading Post of 22nd June 1726 that 
 
 " on the night of the loth of June, about u o'clock, 
 as Mr Alsop was walking beside a small brook in his 
 garden in the Close, the ground gave way under his 
 feet, which threw him into the brook, where he was 
 found dead the next morning." 
 
 He was interred somewhere in the Cathedral, as the 
 Register shows, on i4th June, but as regards the actual 
 spot of his burial, " no man knoweth of his sepulchre 
 unto this day." 
 
 Later on the residence was occupied by " a very
 
 174 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 clever man," appointed by Bishop Hoadly, " without 
 any manner of application," direct or indirect, on his 
 behalf ! Dr John Butler was Chaplain to the Bishop 
 of Norwich and became a popular preacher in London. 
 One sermon, preached before the Sons of the Clergy, 
 was described by a contemporary as " a mighty clever 
 sermon." In 1760 he became a prebendary of Win- 
 chester, and later on was made Archdeacon of Surrey. 
 During the American War he issued a number of political 
 pamphlets, strongly supporting the policy of Lord 
 North. In 1777 he was appointed Bishop of Oxford, 
 and during his occupancy of that See he assisted Dr 
 Woide in transcribing the far-famed Alexandrine MS. 
 of the Bible. He was afterwards translated to the 
 bishopric of Hereford. Dr Butler did much to improve 
 still further the residence by the Deans stables. He 
 spent over 100 on wainscot, and " marble chimney 
 pieces," and other improvements ; and most gener- 
 ously, on becoming Bishop of Oxford, he refused to 
 accept the " wainscot money " due to him, but made 
 it over as " a benefaction for the use of the church." 
 He was succeeded by another prebendary of the name 
 of Butler, who signs himself " Will Butler," who eventu- 
 ally became Bishop of Exeter. At the beginning of the 
 last century the house was occupied for some years by 
 Prebendary Edmund Poulter, a county magistrate of 
 considerable notoriety, who figures in the pages of 
 Cobbett's Rural Rides. He was followed by Mr William 
 Gamier, another rector of Droxford and brother of the 
 Dean of that name. 
 
 In the middle of the eighteenth century a number of 
 able men, members, most of them, of Corpus Christi 
 College, Cambridge, and belonging to the Latitudinarian
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 175 
 
 party in the Church, became prebendaries of the 
 Cathedral. Most of them owed their position to Bishop 
 Hoadly, who is conspicuous among the bishops of Win- 
 chester for the high standard of his appointments to 
 posts of dignity and importance. Among this interest- 
 ing set of men Dr Alured Clarke, a fellow of Corpus, 
 deserves honourable mention as the founder of the Win- 
 chester County Hospital, the first institution of its kind 
 in this country outside London. In the year 1741 he 
 became Dean of Exeter (while retaining his canonry at 
 Winchester), when he founded a similar establishment 
 in the cathedral city of the west. Our Wainscot Book 
 reveals the prebendal residence of this excellent man, 
 who had made a resolution never to enrich himself out 
 of the emoluments of the Church. His house in the 
 Close it is strange and fitting to remember was the 
 one consecrated during the war by its use as a Red Cross 
 hospital, but now again utilised as the Judges' Lodgings, 
 a fact which, we do not doubt, will prove of interest to 
 those learned administrators of the law who, from time 
 to time, occupy the ancient residence. Dr Alured 
 Clarke was succeeded in No. 4, as the house is now 
 called, by Chancellor Hoadly, son of the bishop, who, 
 like his predecessor, was a member of Corpus College, 
 Cambridge, and was also conspicuous for his public 
 generosity, a virtue in which our Latitudinarian pre- 
 bedaries excelled. A contemporary of Chancellor 
 Hoadly 's on the Chapter was Dr Arthur Ashley Sykes, 
 another member of Corpus, and also appointed by 
 Bishop Hoadly. He was a voluminous writer and con- 
 troversialist, the JBritish Museum catalogue containing 
 over eighty entries in his name. He defended Hoadly, 
 vindicated Bentley, answered Waterland, and supported
 
 176 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Clarke in the Arian controversy. With Dr Clarke he 
 was on terms of intimacy, and acted as his assistant 
 preacher at St James', Westminster. His residence at 
 Winchester, it is interesting to discover, was the pleasant 
 house standing on rising ground near the west end of the 
 Cathedral. Dr Sykes died of paralysis in London in 
 1756 and was buried in the Church of St James', West- 
 minster, thus making way, so far as his Winchester 
 residence was concerned, for Dr Edmund Pyle, who 
 moved into it from one of the inferior houses in Dome 
 Alley. 
 
 Dr Edmund Pyle was a prebendary of some distinc- 
 tion. He had been private chaplain to Bishop Hoadly, 
 and was also Archdeacon of York, and Chaplain-in- 
 Ordinary to George II. He was a Corpus man, and 
 possessed in a remarkable degree the gift of keen and 
 pregnant criticism, whether of men or of affairs, which 
 finds expression in a volume of his correspondence, 
 published a few years ago under the title of Memoirs of 
 a Royal Chaplain. Dr Pyle was very pleased with his 
 new residence " on the mount," as it was termed, sorry 
 though he was to lose his " good friend Sykes, who 
 besides his other valuable qualities was," he says, " an 
 excellent member of our Cathedral." Dr Pyle con- 
 sidered his new residence to be " the very best house in 
 Winchester Close " ; he spent over 200 on it, he tells 
 us ; and when, some years later, he was offered by 
 Bishop Hoadly the Mastership of St Cross a very 
 lucrativeposition in those days he could not bring him- 
 self to give up his " pretty house and garden for a nasty 
 dwelling in a dirty boggy village, a mile and half off any 
 conversible person, in an old rats'-hall, that is worse 
 than Magdalene College First Court, at Cambridge."
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 177 
 
 For twenty years Dr Pyle enjoyed the Cathedral 
 stall, which, he says, is " called a very charming thing, 
 and so it is," dividing his time between his beloved 
 residence, his duties as Archdeacon in Yorkshire, and 
 his attendance as Chaplain at Court. It was found at 
 his death, as the Wainscot Book shows, that he had 
 made over to the Chapter the many improvements to 
 his residence that he had carried out, declining to receive 
 for the same any " wainscot-money." He also left 
 the bulk of his fortune, nearly 10,000, in charity 
 bequeathing it to Bishop Morley's College for the 
 distressed widows of clergymen on the north side of 
 the Cathedral. Another member of the same set, also 
 appointed by Bishop Hoadly, was Dr Ayscough, " a 
 Winchester man born and bred in the College there," 
 who eventually became Dean of Bristol. He occupied 
 the residence next to Dr Pyle's, which was pulled down 
 in the last century. But the ablest man among the 
 Winchester Latitudinarians was probably Dr Thomas 
 Balguy, also Archdeacon of Winchester, who owed all 
 his preferments, he tells us, to " the favour and friend- 
 ship of good Bishop Hoadly." Pyle speaks of him as a 
 very agreeable and " special clever man." He occupied 
 the residence, as we learn from the Wainscot Book, with 
 the steep gables and stone mullions, now known as 
 No. 9, which is probably one of the most ancient houses 
 in the Close. For many years he had been lecturer on 
 moral philosophy at Cambridge, and was an author of 
 some distinction. On the death of Warburton he was 
 offered the See of Gloucester, but declined it on the 
 ground of feeble health and failing eyesight. He lived, 
 however, for many years afterwards, dying at length in 
 his prebendal house, when he was buried in the Cathedral,
 
 178 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 where a monument in the south aisle may be seen to his 
 memory. 
 
 It is a matter of much interest that our Wainscot 
 Book enables us to identify the residence of John Mulso, 
 who was prebendary of the Cathedral from 1770 to 
 1791. For Mulso was the intimate and lifelong friend 
 of Gilbert White of Selborne. The great naturalist 
 must have often paid a visit to the Close and have 
 stayed in the mediaeval residence his friend occupied. 
 Its antiquarian associations must surely have rejoiced 
 his heart. For Mulso's residence, into which he moved 
 after a few months' waiting in Dome Alley, and in 
 which he continued to dwell until his death twenty 
 years later, was the house with the vaulted chamber, on 
 the west side of the Close, now known as No. 10. In 
 addition to the vaulted chamber of the time of King 
 Stephen the house possesses a beautifully panelled 
 " parlour above staires," the windows of which contain 
 some fine specimens of early heraldic glass. Among 
 the coats-of-arms there represented are those of Dr 
 White, who was prebendary from 1555 to 1574, thus 
 carrying us back in thought to the years immediately 
 following the Reformation. On the carved oak mantel- 
 piece is the heraldic shield of Abraham Browne, who 
 became prebendary in 1581, and who held the posi- 
 tion for forty-five years. According to tradition this 
 chamber was the resting-place of the body of Stephen 
 Gardiner, the last Roman Catholic bishop of Win- 
 chester, on its arrival from Southwark in February, 
 1555-1556, before it was finally deposited in the Chantry 
 prepared for it in the Cathedral. It is easy to imagine 
 how these historical associations would have appealed 
 to Gilbert White, who was almost as keen an antiquary
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 179 
 
 as he was a naturalist. In Mulso's correspondence with 
 his friend there are several allusions to the classic 
 History of Selborne, which appeared in 1788. Writing 
 to Gilbert White from his residence in the Close, he says : 
 " Your book was mentioned with Respect by our 
 Chapter (a full one) and the volume ordered to be bought 
 for the Library." Again : " Mr Lowth and Dr Sturgess 
 (both able men) admire your book, particularly the 
 Natural History. Among others Dr Warton is exces- 
 sively pleased with it." The copy " ordered to be 
 bought " is still in the Cathedral Library, a first edition 
 of the immortal work. Another interesting association 
 with John Mulso's residence is the fact that his sister, 
 Mrs Hester Chapone, was accustomed, after the death 
 of her husband, to spend much of her time in the Close 
 at Winchester. In her earlier days she had contributed 
 to the pages of Dr Johnson's Rambler, and was soon 
 recognised as an accomplished member of the blue- 
 stocking circle. Richardson delighted in her sprightly 
 conversation, and she frequently visited the novelist at 
 North-End. She was the author of a large number of 
 essays, but her most noteworthy performance, written 
 for the instruction of her niece, John Mulso's daughter, 
 was an educational work, entitled Letters on the Im- 
 provement of the Mind, which passed through many 
 editions. Gilbert White was on terms of close friend- 
 ship with Mrs Chapone, and it is likely that they often 
 met in John Mulso's residence beneath the shadow of 
 the Cathedral. 
 
 Our last prebendary must be Dr Warton, the famous 
 headmaster of Winchester College, " a man of greater 
 celebrity, as regards his general reputation, than any 
 other who has filled that station." He was appointed
 
 i8o THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 prebendary of the Cathedral in 1788, not, it is interest- 
 ing to notice, by the bishop of the diocese, but by 
 William Pitt, the Prime Minister. Two years after his 
 installation, on the death of Sir Peter Rivers Gay, 
 Bart., he took possession of the first house on the right- 
 hand side in Dome Alley, paying to Lady Rivers for 
 fixtures and wainscot-money the sum of 117. In 
 that house Dr Warton lived, when in residence at the 
 Cathedral, until his death in 1800. His time was 
 divided between the rectory of Wickham, on the banks 
 of the River Meon, and his house in the Close of Win- 
 chester. Until the Wainscot Book was discovered no 
 one knew which residence in the Close was associated 
 with Dr Warton and his friends. For he had a large 
 circle of distinguished friends, which included Edmund 
 Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Mrs Elizabeth 
 Montagu, and other celebrities. They were all getting 
 on well in years when Dr Warton was appointed to his 
 stall at Winchester, but it is not impossible that he may 
 have received a few of them in his residence in Dome 
 Alley. Certainly that residence must have witnessed 
 some of his literary labours. During the last ten years 
 of his life he was busily engaged on the works of Pope 
 and of Dryden. His annotated edition of Pope's works, 
 in nine volumes, appeared in 1797, when he at once 
 began a similar edition of Dryden. He lived to publish 
 two volumes, and had other two ready for the press, 
 when death overtook him in his rectory at Wickham, 
 on 23rd February 1800. By his own desire his remains 
 were conveyed to Winchester and interred in the north 
 aisle of the nave of the Cathedral, by the side of his 
 first wife. 
 
 Such are some of the revelations contained in the
 
 WHERE IZAAK WALTON DIED 181 
 
 parchment-covered Wainscot Book, which the librarian 
 ferreted out of the old oak chest in the Cathedral and 
 brought over to my residence a short time ago. The 
 interest which the book has given me is great. And it 
 occurred to me that others, beside myself, when on a 
 visit to Winchester, might desire perhaps to share the 
 pleasure of gazing on the prebendal residences of such 
 interesting personalities as Dr Hawkins and Dr Nicholas, 
 as Mr Anthony Alsop and Prebendary Pyle, as " old 
 Sykes " and Archdeacon Balguy, as John Mulso and 
 Dr Wart on. At any rate, many will be found to view 
 with unaffected interest and delight the house in Dome 
 Alley in which the grand old man, beloved alike in 
 England and America, "the prince of fishermen " and 
 " the prince of biographers," spent the last years of his 
 long and honoured life, and in which, at length, doubt- 
 less in one of the panelled chambers, he breathed his 
 last on that bitter December day, shortly before 
 Christmas, in the year 1683.
 
 TH1 RIV1RSIDB PRESS LIMITED. BDINBUROH
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
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