COUNTRY LIFE
WILD flowers thrive on limestone and, since the oolite of the Cotswolds is the kindest of all limestones; there they excel. In the dells, the disused " guars " and by the roadside, summer flowers are in cavalcades, the captains of the throng being the bee orchis (less common than last year), the pyramidal and the lilac fragrant orchises, clustered campanulas, viper's bugloss with a blue as-royal as the purple murex of ancient Tyre, the yellow spires of the purple-eyed mullein and the musk thistle that, like the most winning of all these wayside flowers, the meadow cranesbill, sports into white. The most wonderful flower-scene I ever saw on the wolds was a field whose surface was hidden by the multitude of Pasque Flowers (Pulsatilla) upon it and, where the land turned a half-corner, there was not a single one. There is a diabolical plot afoot to spray the illuminated borders of the wayside with some witch's brew, and I am glad to see that the knights of Perdita are up in arms about it.
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