The scene of this drawing is laid in the park at Brocket Hall, to which reference is made in connection with a subsequent illustration (Plate 65). The park is full of ancient timber, one great oak on the border of the two counties (Herts and Beds) being mentioned in Doomsday Book, and another going by the name of Queen Elizabeth's oak, from the tradition that the Princess was sitting under it when the news reached her that she was Queen of England.[10] The Hawthorn Valley runs for nearly a mile from one of the park entrances towards the more woodland part of the estate, and was formerly used as a private race-course. The artist has treated a very difficult subject with success, as any one, especially an amateur, who has tried to portray masses of hawthorn blossom will readily admit. Any attempt to draw the flowers and fill in the foliage is hopeless, and it can only be done, as in this case, by erasure. Hardly less difficult to accomplish are the delicate fronds of the young bracken, unfolding upwards by inches a day, which can only be treated suggestively. In the original, which is on a somewhat large scale, the middle distance is enlivened with browsing rabbits, but the very considerable reduction of the drawing has reduced these to a size which renders them hardly distinguishable. [Illustration: 38. OX-EYE DAISIES, NEAR WESTERHAM, KENT _From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._ Painted 1902.] Whilst no Exhibition passes nowadays which has not one or more representations of the "blithe populace" of daisies, the fashion has only come in of late years. Even the Flemings, who were so partial to the flowers of the field, seem to have considered it beneath their notice--a strange occurrence, because one can hardly turn over the pages of any missal of a corresponding epoch without coming upon many a faithful representation of the rose-encircled orb. Chaucer extolled it Above all the flow'res in the mead Then love I most these flow'res white and red, Such that men callen daisies in our town. And much content it gave him To see this flow'r against the sunne spread. When it upriseth early by the morrow That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow. He recognised its name of "day's eye," because it opens and closes its flower with the daylight, in the lines-- The daisie or els the eye of the daie, The emprise and the floure of floures alle. In fact it was a favourite with English poets long before it came under the notice of English painters. Witness Milton's well-known line-- Meadows trim with daisies pied. It was not until the epoch of the pre-Raphaelite brethren that the daisies which pie the meadows seemed worthy of perpetuation, and it was reserved to Frederick Walker, in his "Harbour of Refuge," to limn them on a lawn falling beneath the scythe.