The roan and white cattle happily grazing in the meadows by the Hogsmill brook look as if they had never been absent, as if they belonged to the place, like the trees, and had never been shut up in the yards through so terrible a winter. The water of the Hogsmill has a way of escaping like that of larger channels, and has made for itself a course for its overflow across a corner of the meadow by the road. A thin place in the rather raised bank lets it through in flood-time (like a bursting loose of the Mississippi), and down it rushes towards the moat. Beside the furrows thus soaked now and then, there are bunches of marsh-marigold in flower, and though the field is bright with dandelions and buttercups, the marigolds are numerous enough to be visible on the other side of it, 300 yards or more distant, and are easily distinguished by their different yellow. White cuckoo-flowers (_Cardamine_) are so thick in many fields that the green tint of the grass is lost under their silvery hue. Bluebells are in full bloom. There are some on the mound between Claygate and the Ewell road; the footpath to Chessington from Roxby Farm passes a copse on the left which shimmers in the azure; on the mound on the right of the lane to Horton they are plentiful this year--the hedge has been cut, and consequently more have shot up. Cowslips innumerable. The pond by the Ewell road, between this and Red Lion Lane, is dotted with white water-crowfoot. The first that flowered were in the pond in the centre of Tolworth Common. The understalks are long and slender, and with a filament rather than leaves--like seaweed--but when the flower appears these larger leaves float on the surface. Quantities of this ranunculus come floating down the Hogsmill brook, at times catching against the bridge. A little pond by the lane near Bone's Gate was white with this flower lately, quite covered from bank to bank, not a spare inch without its silver cup. Vetches are in flower; there are always some up the Long Ditton road on the bank by Swaynes-Thorp. Shepherd's purse stands up in flower in the waste places, and on the side of the ditches thick branches of hedge-mustard lift their white petals. The delicate wind anemones flowered thickly in Claygate Lane this year. On April 24 the mound on the right-hand side was dotted with them. They had pushed up through the dead dry oak-leaves of last autumn. The foliage of the wind anemone is finely cut and divided, so that it casts a lovely shadow on any chance leaf that lies under it: it might suggest a design. The anemones have not flowered there like this since I have known the lane before. They were thicker than I have ever seen them there. Dog-violets, barren strawberry, and the yellowish-green spurge are in flower there now.