The Call of the Wildflower

ithe

a prospect w

ab

rious kinds are often to be seen; herons stand motionless by the pools, or flap slowly away if disturbed in their meditation; pewits wheel and cry overhead; and the redshank, most clamorous of birds during the nesting-season, makes such a din as almost to distract the attention of the intruding botanist. For it is the botanist who is specially drawn to these wild water-ways, where hours may be p

ed by Crabbe in one of his Tales, "The Lover's Journey"; a passage which has been praised as one of the best pictures ever given of dike-land scenery. There are lines in it which might

ers that o'er the

nature of th

ions beautifying the desolate mud-banks? The "dulness" seems to be-well, not on the part

Newhaven. From the central part of this alluvial basin the view is very striking all around; for the estuary seems to be everywhere enclosed, except to seaward, by the great smooth slopes of the chalk Downs. On its west si

it is misnamed; for though the petals are pink, its yellow eye and general form proclaim it to be of the primulace?, and "water-primrose" should by preference be its title. There are few prettier sights than a company of these elegant flo

of a dwarf water-lily. By no means common, but growing in profusion where it grows at all, the dainty little frog-bit, once met with, always remains a favourite. The true water-lilies, both the white and the yellow, are also native on the levels;

maller relative the brook-lime; and the queer mare's-tails, which in the midst of a running stream look like a number of tiny fir-trees out of their element. The umbelliferous family is also well represented. Wild celery is there; and the showy water-parsnip (sium); the graceful tubular water-dropwort, and its big neighbour the horse-bane, which in some places swells

; then, as you turn a corner, a long vista of arrow-heads meets the eye, nothing but arrow-heads between bank and bank, their sharp, barbed foliage topping the surface in a phalanx: or again, you may come upon fifty yards of frog-bit, a multitude of small green bucklers that entirely hide the water; or a radiant colony of water-lilies, whose broad leaves make t

ike those of a large frog-bit or a small water-lily, though the botanists tell us it is a gentian. I remember that on the first occasion when I saw it there, on a late summer day, there was only a single blossom left, and as that was on a

e, were once islands in the bay. Walking north from Pevensey, by a road which traverses this inhospitable flat, one sees the walls of Hurstmonceux Castle in front, on what was originally the coast-line; on either side of the highway is a maze of ditches and dikes, among which rare flowers

t to the tidal stream of the Arun, a piece of partially drained bog-land which in a wet winter season is apt to be flooded anew, and to revert to its primitive state of swamp. It is a glorious place to wander over, on a sunny August afternoon, with the great escarpment of the Downs, and the ever-prominen

rsnip, water-plantain, yellow cress, glaucous stitchwort, and other choice things, are fringed here and there with purple loosestrife, and with marsh-woundwort almost equal to the loosestrife in size and colour; and mingling with these in like luxurian

and reeds of

azzled eye with

might even become embarrassing, were it not th