No description of this flower, _Mimulus luteus_, known to the country people as "wild musk," is needed here--it is well known as a garden plant. The large foxglove-shaped flowers grow singly on {284} their stems among the topmost leaves, and the form of stem, leaf, and flower is a very perfect example of that kind of formal beauty in plants which is called "decorative." This character is well shown in the accompanying figure, reduced to little more than half the natural size, from a spray plucked at Bransbury, on the Test. But the shape is nothing, and is scarcely seen or noticed twenty-five to fifty yards away, the proper distance at which to view the blossoming plants; not indeed as a plant-student or an admirer of flowers in a garden would view it, as the one thing to see, but merely as part of the scene. The colour is then everything. There is no purer, no more {285} beautiful yellow in any of our wild flowers, from the primrose and the almost equally pale, exquisite blossom which we improperly name "dark mullein" in our books on account of its lovely purple eye, to the intensest pure yellow of the marsh marigold. [Illustration: MIMULUS LUTEUS] But although purity of colour is the chief thing, it would not of itself serve to give so great a distinction to this plant; the charm is in the colour and the way in which Nature has disposed it, abundantly, in single, separate blossoms, among leaves of a green that is rich and beautiful, and looks almost dark by contrast with that shining, luminous hue it sets off so well. On 17th September it was Harvest Festival Sunday at the little church at Itchen Abbas, where I worshipped that day, and I noticed that the decorators had dressed up the font with water-plants and flowers from the river; reeds and reed-mace, or cat's-tail, and the yellow mimulus. It was a mistake. Deep green, glossy foliage, and white and brilliantly coloured flowers look well in churches; white chrysanthemums, arums, azaleas, and other conspicuous white flowers; and scarlet geraniums, and many other garden blooms which seen in masses in the sunshine hurt the sense--cinerarias, calceolarias, larkspurs, etc. The subdued light of the interior softens the intensity, and sometimes crudity, of the strongest colours, and makes them suitable for decoration. The effect is like that of stained-glass windows, or of a bright embroidery on a sober ground. The graceful, grey, flowery reeds, and the light-green {286} reed-mace, with its brown velvet head, and the moist yellow of the mimulus, which quickly loses its freshness, look not well in the dim, religious light of the old village church. These should be seen where the sunlight and wind and water are, or not seen at all. [Sidenote: Mimulus and Camaloté]