He also gathers quantities of spring
flowers, as violets. This spring [1879], owing to the severity of the
season, there were practically none to gather, and when the weather
moderated the garden flowers preceded those of the hedge. Till the 10th
of March not a spot of colour was to be seen. About that time bright
yellow flowers appeared suddenly on the clayey banks and waste places,
and among the hard clay lumps of fields ploughed but not sown.
The brilliant yellow formed a striking contrast to the dull brown of the
clods, there being no green leaf to moderate the extremes of tint. These
were the blossoms of the coltsfoot, that sends up a stalk surrounded
with faintly rosy scales. Several such stalks often spring from a single
clod: lift the heavy clod, and you have half a dozen flowers, a whole
bunch, without a single leaf. Usually the young grasses and the
seed-leaves of plants have risen up and supply a general green; but this
year the coltsfoot bloomed unsupported, studding the dark ground with
gold.
Now the frogs are busy, and the land lizards come forth. Even these the
moucher sometimes captures; for there is nothing so strange but that
some one selects it for a pet. The mad March hares scamper about in
broad daylight over the corn, whose pale green blades rise in straight
lines a few inches above the soil. They are chasing their skittish
loves, instead of soberly dreaming the day away in a bunch of grass.
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