RAMBLES IN SEARCH OF WILD-FLOWERS.

EARLY MONTHS OF THE YEAR.


A ramble in search of wild-flowers in January would be pretty much
'labour in vain;' at least so far as that one special object was
concerned. I do not mean to say that all nature is dead at that season,
for there are mosses, lichens, and fungi to be found in abundance; but
flowers, in the ordinary meaning of the word, are not to be found,
unless we consider those brilliant frostwork flowers which we sometimes
find as such. It was a season unusually cold for Devonshire, when, with
a merry party of boys and girls, I sallied forth to see how nature
looked decked in her robe of virgin white. Hill and valley were one
sheet of 'innocent snow;' and every twig, leaf, and blade of grass;
every spray of the furze and heath; and every broad, drooping leaf of
that beautiful fern the hart's tongue (_Scolopendrium vulgare_), was
coated with hoar-frost, and sparkling in the rosy sunbeams like the
flowers in a magic garden. At Sherbrook Lake, where a rivulet of clear
water usually flows along the bottom of the ravine down to the sea,
there was now a hard mass of ice, on which our boys rushed for a passing
slide; and above, where the deeper water lies under the shadow of the
brushwood, the frost had been busy performing its frolic feats--

'And see where it has hung th' embroidered banks
With forms so various that no powers of art,
The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene!
Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high
(Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof
Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees