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With the paler hawkweeds, whose edges are so delicately trimmed and cut and balanced, almost as if made by cleft human fingers to human design, whose globes of down are like geometrical circles built up of facets, instead of by one revolution of the compasses.

Fasciated hawkweeds and twisted teasels gave the same average constitution of the offspring from highly monstrous, and from apparently wholly normal individuals. In other words the fullest development of the visible characteristic was not in the slightest degree an indication of better hereditary tendencies.

And with the disappearance of the anemones as the season advances, their place is taken by blood-red poppies, by golden hawkweeds and by masses of tall magenta-coloured blooms of the wild gladiolus, theJacob’s Ladderof our own English gardens.

This was shown by the above cited experiments of Nageli with the hawkweeds, and may easily be controlled in other cases. The ground-honeysuckle or Lotus corniculatus grows in Holland partly on the dry and sandy soil of the dunes, and occasionally in meadows.

Blackberries are thick in favourable seasons like all fruit, they are an uncertain crop; and hawkweeds are there everywhere on the sward towards the edge.

Deep beds of lilies-of-the-valley grow everywhere beneath the trees; and in the meadows purple columbines, white asphodels, the Alpine spiræa, tall, with feathery leaves, blue scabious, golden hawkweeds, turkscap lilies, and, better than all, the exquisite narcissus poeticus, with its crimson-tipped cup, and the pure pale lilies of San Bruno, are crowded in a maze of dazzling brightness.

So also in other cases. For instance, the willows which have 13 species in one and 31 species in the other of these manuals, and the hawkweeds for which the figures are 7 and 32 respectively. Other authors have made still greater numbers of species in the same groups. It is very difficult to estimate systematic differences on the ground of comparative studies alone.

Milk-worts of all bright and tender tints combined with borage, iris, hawkweeds, harebells, crimson clover, thyme, red snapdragon, golden asters, and dreamy love-in-a-mist, to weave a marvellous carpet such as the looms of Shiraz or of Cashmere never spread. Rarely have I gazed on Flora in such riot, such luxuriance, such self-abandonment to joy. The air was filled with fragrances.

Masses of gossamer covered with dew-drops lay among the bracken, like fairies' washing hung out to dry. There was a hint of hoarfrost under the bushes. The air had that delicious invigorating quality when every breath sets the body dancing. It was too late in the year for flowers, though here and there a little gorse lingered, or a few buttercups and hawkweeds.