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C. J. Cornish - The Naturalist on the Thames
on a hedgeside. And, though it is not a flower, there is the "quaking grass" beloved of children, though
useless as cattle food, and a sign of bad pasturage, but the only grass which cottage people gather to
keep, as a memento of the hayfields.
Flowering plants form a large part of the actual herbage from which the hay is made. The bottom of a
good crop of mowing grass springs from a tangle of clover and leguminous plants, all owning blossoms,
and many of them of brilliant hues and exquisite perfume. Chief among these is the red meadow-clover,
the pride of the hayfields. Few plants can match its perfume, or the cool freshness of its leaves. With this
is mixed the little hop-clover, and the sucklings, and other tiny gold-dust blossoms. Meadow vetchling,
and the tall meadow crowfoot, with rich yellow blooms and dainty leaves, are set off by the pinks of the
clover and the crimson of stray sainfoin clusters. All these blossoms with the various flowers of the
grasses, tend to ripen and come to perfection together, the heats of June bringing the whole multitude on
together as in a natural forcing-pit. It is then that the mowing grass is said to be "ripe," when all the
blossoms are shedding their pollen, and giving hay-fever to those who enter the fields. It must be cut
then, wet or fine, or the quality and aroma of the hay passes away beyond recovery. Perhaps it is an
accident that most of our meadow flowers are white or yellow. The two most striking exceptions are
from foreign soil, the purple-blue lucerne and the crimson sainfoin. But yellow is not the universally
predominant hue of the flowers of grasses, for in Switzerland and the Italian Alps the hayfields are as
blue with campanulas as they are here yellow with buttercups. The turf on our chalk downs shows
flowers more nearly approaching in tint the flora of the Alps. The hair-bells with their pale blue, and the
dark-purple campanulas, give the complement of blue absent in the lower meadows, while the tiny
milkwort is as deep an ultramarine as the Alpine gentians themselves. But the turf of the chalk downs,
never rising to any height, and without the forcing power of the valley grasses, yields no such wealth of
colour or perfume as the meadow flowers lavish on our senses in the early weeks of June.
RIVERSIDE GARDENING
"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden."
A Recent addition to the country house is the "water garden," in which a running brook is the centre
and motif of the subsidiary ornaments of flowers, ferns, trees, shrubs, and mosses. Nature is in
league with art in the brook garden, for nowhere is wild vegetation so luxuriant, and the two forces of
warmth and moisture so generally combined, as by the banks of running streams. The brook is its own
landscape gardener, and curves and slopes its own banks and terraces, sheltered from rough winds and
prone to the sun.
Many houses near the Thames, especially those under the chalk hills which fringe much of the valley,
have near them some rill or brook running to the main river. On the sides of the chalk hills, though not on
their summits, these streams cut narrow gullies and glens. Wherever, in fact, there is hilly, broken
ground, the little rills form these broken ravines and gullies, often only a few yards in width from side to
side. Usually these brooklet valleys are choked with brambles or fern, and filled with rank undergrowth.
Often the stream is overhung and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies.
The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force
vertical growth; the smaller bushes - hawthorn, briar, and wild guelder-rose - also assume graceful forms
unhidden, for they always bow their heads towards the sun-reflecting stream. Part of the charm of the
transformation of these brookside jungles into the brookside garden lies in the gradual and experimental
method of their conversion. Every one knows that running water is the most delightful thing to play with
provided in this world; and the management of the water is the first amusement in forming the brook
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