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The sky was blue without a cloud, the blaze of the gorse was dimming, but the ferns and foxgloves swung in the breeze, the hedgerows laughed with wild roses and honeysuckle, and the air was full of life and sweetness and the songs of larks and the homely humming of bees.

On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered high above the foxgloves. It was curious to hear the labouring people say, "There's the guckoo," when the cuckoo cried. They said he called "guckoo"; so cuckoo sounded to their ears.

Morval's Head. It was a glorious autumn afternoon, and, though the bracken was brown and withered, there were specimens of wild flowers to be picked and written down in the note-books. Summer seemed to have lingered, and had left poppies, honeysuckle, foxgloves, and other blossoms that were certainly out of season.

Indeed, he was a man keenly alive to the beauty of all that was bygone. But however his sympathy with his old feelings might affect his liking for the foxgloves, the very truth was that he scorned all flowers together. They were but garnishings, childish toys, trifling ornaments for ladies' chimney-shelves. It was towards his cauliflowers and peas and cabbage that his heart grew warm.

Tall white gladiolas shot up above it, and spires of foxgloves and rockets, while all about them and among the rose-trees, climbed the morning glory and the briony vine.

Yesterday I went to the lane which I visit every year at this time, the deep, rutty cart-track, descending between banks covered with giant fronds of the polypodium, and overhung with wych-elm and hazel, to that cool, grassy nook where the noble flowers hang on stems all but of my own height. Nowhere have I seen finer foxgloves.

Why not bee-orchises for wartwort, and gentians for chickweed? I have no fault to find with the foxgloves under the apple-tree or with the ivy-leaved toad-flax that hangs with its elfin flowers from every cranny in the wall. But I protest against the dandelions and the superfluity of groundsel.

The path chose its way so that you might see the sea from every inch of it. The thundering headlands sprang from Jay's left hand, and she could see the cliffs written over with strange lines, and the shadow that they cast upon deep water. It was the colour of a great passion, and against that colour pink foxgloves bowed dramatically upon the fringe of space.

All old-timers are represented there, honeysuckle, wormwood, petunias, rosemary, gilias, mignonette, heliotrope and foxgloves. If they can not all be there together, all are there at some time in the summer. Montbretia, Japanese sunflower, larkspur, columbine and gourds all have their time and place and opportunity in this San Francisco garden.

After the primroses, and while some still remained sprinkled about in the sunny places, came the deep blue hyacinths, and then the golden kingcups, and the downy yellow cowslips: last of all, a tall triumphant host of foxgloves spread themselves over forest and common.