The surprising delicacy of our first spring flowers, of the hepatica, the spring beauty, the arbutus, the bloodroot, the rue-anemone, the dicentra,—a beauty and delicacy that pertains to exclusive wood forms,—contrasts with the more hardy, hairy, hedge-row look of their firstlings of the spring, like the primrose, the hyacinth, the wood spurge, the green hellebore, the hedge garlic, the moschatel, the daffodil, the celandine, and others. Most of these flowers take one by their multitude; the primrose covers broad hedge banks for miles as with a carpet of bloom. In my excursions into field and forest I saw nothing of the intense brilliancy of our cardinal flower, which almost baffles the eye; nothing with the wild grace of our meadow or mountain lilies; no wood flower so taking to the eye as our painted trillium and lady's-slipper; no bog flower that compares with our calopogon and arethusa, so common in southeastern New England;
no brookside flower that equals our jewel-weed; no rock flower before which one would pause with the same feeling of admiration as before our columbine; no violet as striking as our bird's-foot violet; no trailing flower that approaches our matchless arbutus; no fern as delicate as our maiden-hair; no flowering shrub as sweet as our azaleas. In fact, their flora presented a commoner type of beauty, very comely and pleasing, but not so exquisite and surprising as our own. The contrast is well shown in the flowering of the maples of the two countries,—that of the European species being stiff and coarse compared with the fringe-like grace and delicacy of our maple. In like manner the silken tresses of our white pine contrast strongly with the coarser foliage of the European pines. But what they have, they have in greatest profusion. Few of their flowers waste their sweetness on the desert air; they throng the fields, lanes, and highways, and are known and seen of all. They bloom on the housetops, and wave from the summits of castle walls. The spring meadows are carpeted with flowers, and the midsummer grain-fields, from one end of the kingdom to the other, are spotted with fire and gold in the scarlet poppies and corn marigolds.
I plucked but one white pond-lily, and that was in the Kew Gardens, where I suppose the plucking was trespassing. Its petals were slightly blunter than ours, and it had no perfume. Indeed, in the matter of sweet-scented flowers, our flora shows by
far the more varieties, the British flora seeming richer in this respect by reason of the abundance of specimens of any given kind.
It is, indeed, a flowery land; a kind of perpetual spring-time reigns there, a perennial freshness and bloom such as our fierce skies do not permit.
IX
BRITISH FERTILITY
I
In crossing the Atlantic from the New World to the Old, one of the first intimations the traveler has that he is nearing a strange shore, and an old and populous one, is the greater boldness and familiarity of the swarms of sea-gulls that begin to hover in the wake of the ship, and dive and contend with each other for the fragments and parings thrown overboard from the pantry. They have at once a different air and manner from those we left behind. How bold and tireless they are, pursuing the vessel from dawn to dark, and coming almost near enough to take the food out of your hand as you lean over the bulwarks. It is a sign in the air; it tells the whole story of the hungry and populous countries you are approaching; it is swarming and omnivorous Europe come out to meet you. You are near the sea-marge of a land teeming with life, a land where the prevailing forms are indeed few, but these on the most copious and vehement scale; where the birds and animals are not only more numerous than at home, but more dominating and aggressive, more closely associated with man,