there
seemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broad
band of charlock: its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the mass
that as it first catches the eye it seems as if the land were lit up
by the sun. After it the buttercups appear of a quiet colour, like
dead gold in contrast.

Under-foot, almost in the very dust of the road, the silverweed opened
its yellow petals, and where there was a dry bank, or by the gateways
leading into the corn, the pink pimpernel grew. For some time I
suspected the pimpernel of not invariably closing its petals before
rain, and at last by precise observation found that it did not. Twice
in a comparatively short period I noted the petals wide open within a
few minutes of a shower. It appears rather to close during the
atmospheric change which occurs previous to rain than to rain itself.
Once now and then a shower seems to come up in the driest weather
without warning or change in the atmosphere: the cloud is over and
gone almost before it seems worth while to take shelter. To the
approach of such shower-clouds the pimpernel does not invariably
respond, but it is perfectly accurate if anything serious be brewing.
By a furrow in the sward by the roadside there grew a little piece of
some species of gorse--so small and delicate, with the tiniest yellow
flowers, that it was well worthy of a place where it would be admired;
for few could have seen it hidden there.

Birds'-foot lotus covered the sward of one part of the Cuckoo-fields,
on the higher ground near the woods, where the soil was dry; and by
the hedge there were some bushy plants of the rest-harrow, whose
prickly branches repel cattle and whose appearance reproaches the
farmer for neglect. Yet though an outcast with animals and men, it
bears a beautiful flower, butterfly-shaped and delicately tinted with
pink. Now, as the days roll on, the blue succory and the scarlet
poppies stand side by side in the yellow wheat but just outside my
Cuckoo-fields, and one or two stray corncockles bloom; they are not
common here and are perhaps brought from a distance. Here you may walk
many miles and even wait several harvests to see a corncockle.

The thistledown floats; and see, yonder the white balls are rolling
before the gentle air along the very tips of the bronzing wheat-ears.
By the hedge the straggling stalks of St. John's wort lift the yellow
petals dotted with black specks above the bunches of grass. The
leaves, h