Railway Flowers
I do not recall ever seeing a word in praise of railway-flowers ; not the flowers of the country-station, but of the cuttings. In early spring the primroses in the south were as splendid as ever on the steep banks by the woodlands, but there were few cowslips. But in Oxfordshire, and across the Cotswolds into Gloucestershire, miles upon miles of deep golden cowslips ran by the track, glowing deeply in the cold spring air. In Bedfordshire, in June, there was a place where Canterbury bells had sown themselves for a mile or two all along a deep cutting, mauve and pink and white, and another that was plushy pink with valerian. Earlier there was another rocky cutting red and brown with wallflowers ; several flaming with gorse and broom. By midsummer there were banks of wild strawberries, and everywhere snowy cascades of moon-daisy. In August there will be a glory of bay willow-herb, and in Scotland forests of foxglove, and just now, in Virginia, miles of golden day-lily running by the negro-shacks on the edges of the woodland.
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