"Go out," says Ruskin, "in the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and, as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom-paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds, sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness—look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm: 'He maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains.'"
In the passage just quoted, Ruskin alludes especially to Swiss meadows. They are especially remarkable in the beauty and variety of flowers. In our fields the herbage is mainly grass, and if it often happens that they glow with buttercups or are white with ox-eye daisies, these are but unwelcome intruders, and add nothing to the value of the hay. Swiss meadows, on the contrary, are sweet and lovely with wild geraniums, harebells, bluebells, pink restharrow, yellow lady's-bedstraw, chervil, eye-bright, red and white silenes, geraniums, gentians, and many other flowers which have no familiar names, all adding, not only to the beauty and sweetness of the meadows, but forming a valuable part of the crop itself.[1]
"At the foot of the downs."
On the downs, indeed, things change slowly, and in parts of Sussex the strong, slow oxen still draw the wagons laden with warm hay or golden wheat sheaves, or drag the wooden plough along the slopes of the downs, just as they did a thousand years ago.
I love the open downs most, but without hedges England would not be England. Hedges are everywhere full of beauty and interest, and nowhere more so than at the foot of the downs, where they are in great part composed of wild guelder roses and rich, dark yews, decked with festoons of traveller's joy, the wild bryonies, and garlands of wild roses covered with thousands of white or delicate pink flowers, each with a centre of gold.
At the foot of the downs spring sparking, clear streams; rain from heaven purified still further by being filtered through a thousand feet of chalk; fringed with purple loosestrife, and willowherb, starred with white water ranunculuses, or rich watercress, while every now and then a brown water-rat rustles in the grasses at the edge, and splashes into the water, or a pink speckled trout glides out of sight.
In many of our Midland and Northern counties most of the meadows lie in parallel undulations or "rigs." These are generally about a furlong (220 yards) in length, and either one or two poles (5 1/2 or 11 yards) in breadth. They seldom run straight, but tend to curve towards the left. At each end of the field a high bank, locally called a balk, often three or four feet high, runs at
- ↑ M. Correvon informs me that the Gruyère cheese is supposed to owe its peculiar flavour to the Alpine Alchemilla, which is now on that account often purposely grown elsewhere.
