Chace where the wind-anemones grew was in a
small detached copse of ash-poles nearly a mile from the great woods.
Between the stoles, which were rather far apart, the ground was quite
covered in spring with dark-green vegetation, so that it was
impossible to walk there without treading down the leaves of
bluebells, anemones, and similar woodland plants. But if you wished to
see the anemones in their full beauty it was necessary to visit the
copse frequently; for if you forgot it, or delayed a fortnight, very
likely upon returning you would find that their fleeting loveliness
was over. Their slender red stems rise but a few inches, and are
surrounded with three leaves; the six white petals of the cup-shaped
flower droop a little and have a golden centre. Under the petal is a
tinge of purple, which is sometimes faintly visible through it. The
leaves are not only three in number, but are each cut deeply thrice;
they are hardy, but the flower extremely delicate.

On the banks dividing the copse from the meadows around it the blue
dog-violets, which have no perfume, often opened so large and wide as
to resemble pansies. They do not appear like this till just as their
flowering time is almost over. The meadows by the copse were small,
not more than two or three acres each. One which was marshy was white
for weeks together with the lady's-smock or cuckoo-flower. The petals
of these flowers are silvery white in some places, in others tinted
with lilac. The hues of wild flowers vary with their situation: in
shady woodlands the toadflax or butter-and-eggs is often pale--a
sulphur colour; upon the Downs it is a deep and beautiful yellow. In a
ditch, of this marshy meadow was a great bunch of woodruff, above
whose green whorls the white flowers were lifted. Over them the
brambles arched, their leaves growing in fives, and each leaf prickly.
The bramble-shoots, as they touch the ground, take root and rise
again, and thus would soon cross a field were they not cut down.

Pheasants were fond of visiting this copse, following the hedgerows to
it from the Chace, and they always had one or more nests in it. A
green woodpecker took it in his route, though he did not stay long,
there not being many trees. These birds seem to have their regular
rounds; there are some copses where they are scarcely ever heard. They
prefer old trees; where there is much large and decaying timber, there
the woodpeckers come. Such little meadows as these abou