Part 6

It is a perplexing matter to reconcile our feelings to the rigor, and our reason to the necessity, of some plants being made the instrument of destruction to the insect world. Of British plants we have only a few so constructed, which, having clammy joints and calyxes, entangle them to death. The sun-dew (droseræ) destroys in a different manner, yet kills them without torture. But we have one plant in our gardens, a native of North America, than which none can be more cruelly destructive of animal life, the dogsbane (apocynum androsæmifolium), which is generally conducive to the death of every fly that settles upon it. Allured by the honey on the nectary of the expanded blossom, the instant the trunk is protruded to feed on it, the filaments close, and, catching the fly by the extremity of its proboscis, detain the poor prisoner writhing in protracted struggles till released by death, a death apparently occasioned by exhaustion alone; the filaments then relax, and the body falls to the ground. The plant will at times be dusky from the numbers of imprisoned wretches. This elastic action of the filaments may be conducive to the fertilizing of the seed by scattering the pollen from the anthers, as is the case with the berberry; but we are not sensible that the destruction of the creatures which excite the action is in any way essential to the wants or perfection of the plant, and our ignorance favors the idea of a wanton cruelty in the herb; but how little of the causes and motives of action of created things do we know! and it must be unlimitable arrogance alone that could question the wisdom of the mechanism of him “that judgeth rightly;” the operations of a simple plant confound and humble us, and, like the hand-writing on the wall, though seen by many, can be explained but by ONE.

The different manner in which vegetables exert their organic powers to effect the destruction of insects, is not perhaps unworthy of a brief notice; some, as those above mentioned, accomplish it by means of elastic or irritable actions, adhesive substances, and so forth; but we have another plant in our green-houses, the glaucous birthwort (aristol. glauca), that effects these purposes without any of these means, but principally by conformation. The whole internal surface of the tubular flower is beset with minute strong spines, pointing downwards; these present no impediment to the descent of the animal which may seek for the sweet liquor lodged upon the nectarium at the base of the blossom, nor is there any obstruction provided for its return by means of valves or contractions, the tube remaining open; but the creature cannot crawl up by reason of the inverted spines, and to prevent its escape by flying up the tube, the flower makes an extraordinary curve, bending up like a horn, so that any winged creature must be beaten back by striking against the roof of this neck as often as it attempts to mount, and falling back to the bulbous prison at the base of the flower, dies by confinement and starvation, and there we find them: a certain number of these perishing, the blossom fades and drops off.

All the varieties of this snapdragon have the power of maintaining a state of vegetation in great droughts, when most other plants yield to the influence of the weather; and it is the more remarkable in these plants, as the places in which they chiefly delight to vegetate are particularly exposed to the influence of the sun. In that hot dry summer of 1825, when vegetation was in general burned up and withered away, yet did this plant continue to exist on parched walls, and draw nutriment from sources apparently unable to afford it; not in full vigor certainly, but in a state of verdure beyond any of its associates. The common burnet (poterium sanguisorba) of our pastures, in a remarkable degree, likewise possesses this faculty of preserving its verdure, and flourishing amid surrounding aridity and exhaustion. It is probable that these plants, and some others, have the power of imbibing that insensible moisture, which arises from the earth even in the driest weather, or from the air which passes over them. The immense evaporation proceeding from the earth, even in the hottest season, supplies the air constantly with moisture; and as every square foot of this element can sustain eleven grains of water, an abundant provision is made for every demand. We can do little more than note these facts: to attempt to reason upon the causes, why particular plants are endowed with peculiar faculties, would be mere idleness; yet, in remarking this, we cannot pass over the conviction, that the continual escape of moisture from one body, and its imbibition by another, this unremitting motion and circulation of matter, are parts of that wonderful ordination, whereby the beneficence and wisdom of Providence are manifested: without the agency of evaporation, not dwelling on the infinitude of effects and results, no vegetation could exist, no animal life continue.

The ivy (hedera helix), the dark-looking ivy, almost covers with its thick foliage the pollards in our hedge-rows; and, creeping up the sides of the old barn, and chimney of the cottage, nearly hides them from our sight; affording a sheltered roosting-place to many poor birds, and is almost their only refuge in the cold season of the year. But the ivy can boast of much more extensive service to the poor wayfaring beings of creation, than the merely affording them a covering from the winds of winter. Those two extreme quarters of our year, autumn and spring, yield to most animals but a very slender and precarious supply of food; but the ivy in those periods saves many from want and death; and the peculiar situations, in which it prefers to flourish, are essential to the preservation of this supply, as in less sheltered ones it would be destroyed. In the month of October the ivy blooms in profusion, and spreading over the warm side of some neglected wall, or the sunny bark of the broad ash on the bank, its flowers become a universal banquet to the insect race. The great black fly (musca grossa), and its numerous tribe, with multitudes of small winged creatures, resort to them; and there we see those beautiful animals, the latest birth of the year, the admiral (vanessa atalanta) and peacock (vanessa Io) butterflies, hanging with expanded wings like open flowers themselves, enjoying the sunny gleam, and feeding on the sweet liquor that distils from the nectary of this plant. As this honey is produced in succession by the early or later expansion of the bud, it yields a constant supply of food, till the frosts of November destroy the insects, or drive them to their winter retreats. Spring arrives; and in the bitter months of March, April, and even May, at times, when the wild products of the field are nearly consumed, the ivy ripens its berries, and then almost entirely constitutes the food of the missel-thrush, wood-pigeon, and some other birds; and now these shy and wary birds, that commonly avoid the haunts of man, constrained by hunger, will approach our dwellings, to feed upon the ripe berries of the ivy. Now too the blackbird and the thrush resort to its cover, to conceal their nests. These early-building birds find little foliage at this period sufficient to hide their habitations; and did not the ivy lend its aid to preserve them, and no great number are preserved, perhaps few nests would be hidden from the young eyes that seek them. The early expansion of the catkins of the sallow (salix caprea), and others of the willow tribe, whence the bee extracts its first food, and the late blooming of this ivy, are indispensable provisions for the existence of many of the insect race; the “young raven does not cry in vain,” nor is any thing abandoned by that power which called it into being.

We all seem to love the ivy,

“The wanton ivy wreath’d in amorous twines,”

more than any other uncultured evergreen that we possess; yet it is difficult satisfactorily to answer why we have this regard for it. As a lover of the lone, the ivy-mantled ruin, I have often questioned with myself the cause and basis of my regard for that, which was but a fragment of what might have been formerly splendid, and intrinsically possessed but little to engage admiration, yet wreathed in the verdure of the ivy, was admired; but was never satisfied, perhaps unwilling to admit the answer that my mind seemed to give. The ivy is a dependent plant, and delights in waste and ruin. We do not often tolerate its growth when the building is in repair and perfect; but, if time dilapidate the edifice, the ivy takes possession of the fragment, and we call it beautiful; it adorns the castle, but is an indispensable requisite to the remains of the monastic pile. There is an abbey in the North of England, which has been venerated by all its late possessors. It is trimmed, made neat, and looks, perhaps, much as it did formerly, except being in ruins. The situation is exquisite, the remains are splendid, yet with many it fails to excite such interest as it should do. It is a bare reality. A ruin in the West of England once interested me greatly. The design of revisiting and drawing it was expressed at the time. A few days only elapsed; but the inhabitant of a neighboring cottage had most kindly labored hard in the interval, and pulled down “all the nasty ivy, that the gentleman might see the ruin.” He did see it, but every charm had departed. These two instances, from many that might be advanced, manifest that ivy most frequently gives to these ancient edifices the idea of beauty, and contributes chiefly to influence our feelings when viewing them. The ruins of a fortress, or warlike tower, may often historically interest us from the renown of its founder or its possessor, some scene transacted, some villain punished, hero triumphant, or cause promoted, to which we wished success: but the quiet, secluded, monastic cell, or chapel, has no tale to tell; history hardly stays to note even its founder’s name; and all the rest is doubt and darkness; yet, shrouded in its ivied folds, we reverence the remains, we call it picturesque, we draw, we engrave, we lithograph the ruin. We do not regard this ivy as a relic of ancient days; as having shadowed the religious recluse, and with it often, doubtless, piety and faith; for it did not hang around the building in old time, but is comparatively a modern upstart, a sharer of monastic spoils, a usurper of that which has been abandoned by another. The tendril pendent from the orient window, lightly defined in the ray which it excludes, twining with graceful ease round some slender shaft, or woven amid the tracery of the florid arch, is elegantly ornamental, and gives embellishment to beauty; but the main body of the ivy is dark, sombre, massy; yet, strip it from the pile, and we call it sacrilege, the interest of the whole is at an end, the effect ceases,—

“One moment seen, then lost for ever.”

Yet what did the ivy effect? what has departed with it? This evanescent charm perhaps consists in the obscurity, in the sobriety of light it occasioned, in hiding the bare reality, and giving to fancy and imagination room to expand, a plaything to amuse them.

We still retain the name of this plant as given by Pliny, though we know no reason why it was so called; but the word “helix,” winding about, or twisting, is sufficiently apposite.

The foxglove (digitalis purpurea) is found with us in one or two places only, rather existing than flourishing manifesting, like many other plants, a marked partiality to particular soils. It produces an abundance of seed, yet seems to wander little from the station its progenitors had fixed on, as if that alone was congenial to its habits; but with us the soil varies greatly. In the West of England, it thrives and increases with particular luxuriance; but many counties may be searched in vain for a single specimen. It seems to prefer a sandy, gravelly, or loose drained soil; not I think vegetating in strong retentive earths. We have few indigenous plants, not one, perhaps, which we have so often summoned to aid us in our distresses as the foxglove: no plant, not even the colchicum, has been more the object of our fears, our hopes, our trust, and disappointment, than this: we have been grateful for the relief it has afforded, and we have mourned the insufficiency of its powers;—

——“Thy last, sole aid (which art can give) The wo-worn parent seeks, and, hoping, clings In tearless wretchedness to thee; watches with Anxious heart thy subtle progress through the Day, and of thee fitful dreams through all the Night— ——spare, if thou Canst, his hopeless grief; save worth, save beauty, From an early grave.”

As a mere flower, the digitalis is a very handsome plant; and could we rely upon its yielding the virtues it is considered to possess, or could we regulate or control its influence, it would exist unrivalled for beauty and worth amidst our island plants. Why such a name as “foxesgloves,” was bestowed upon this plant it is difficult to say, perhaps from the bare resemblance to finger-cases presented by its flowers: but I am not one of those who cavil or jeer at the common, or “vulgar names,” as we are in the habit of denominating the unscientific appellations of plants; for we must remember, that the culling of herbs and simples, and compounding preparations from them, to relieve the sufferings of nature, were the first rudiments of all our knowledge, the most grateful exertion of human talent, and, after food and clothing, the most necessary objects of life. In ages of simplicity, when every man was the usual dispenser of good or bad, benefit or injury, to his household or his cattle—ere the veterinary art was known, or the drugs of other regions introduced, necessity looked up to the products of our own clime, and the real or fanciful virtues of them were called to the trial, and manifests the reasonableness of bestowing upon plants and herbs such names as might immediately indicate their several uses, or fitness for application; when distinctive characters, had they been given, would have been little attended to; and hence, the numbers found favorable to the cure of particular complaints, the ailments of domestic creatures, or deemed injurious to them. Modern science may wrap up the meaning of its epithets in Greek and Latin terms; but in very many cases they are the mere translations of these despised, “old, vulgar names.” What pleasure it must have afforded the poor sufferer in body or in limb,—what confidence he must have felt for relief, when he knew that the good neighbor who came to bathe his wounds, or assuage his inward torments, brought with him such things as “all-heal, break-stone, bruise-wort, gout-weed, fever-few” (fugio), and twenty other such comfortable mitigators of his afflictions; why, their very names would almost charm away the sense of pain! The modern recipe contains no such terms of comfortable assurance: its meanings are all dark to the sufferer; its influence unknown. And then the good herbalist of old professed to have plants which were “all good:” they could assuage anger by their “loosestrife;” they had “honesty, truelove, and heartsease.” The cayennes, the soys, the ketchups, and extratropical condiments of these days, were not required, when the next thicket would produce “poor man’s pepper, sauce alone, and hedge-mustard;” and the woods and wilds around, when they yielded such delicate viands as “fat-hen, lambs- quarters, way-bread, butter and eggs, with codlins and cream,” afforded no despicable bill of fare. No one ever yet thought of accusing our old simplers of the vice of avarice, or love of lucre; yet their “thrift” is always to be seen: we have their humble “pennywort, herb two-pence, moneywort, silverweed, and gold.” We may smile, perhaps, at the cognomens, or the commemorations of friendships, or of worth, recorded by the old simplers, at their herbs, “Bennet, Robert, Christopher, Gerard, or Basil;” but do the names so bestowed by modern science read better, or sound better? it has “Lightfootia, Lapeyrousia, Hedwigia, Schkuhria, Scheuchzeria;” and surely we may admit, in common benevolence, such partialities as “good King Henry, sweet William, sweet Marjory, sweet Cicely, Lettuce, Mary Gold, and Rose.” There are epithets, however, so very extraordinary, that we must consider them as mere perversions, or at least incapable of explanation at this period. The terms of modern science waver daily; names undergo an annual change, fade with the leaf, and give place to others; but the ancient terms, which some may ridicule, have remained for centuries, and will yet remain, till nature is swallowed up by art. No: let our ancient herbalists, “a grave and whiskered race,” retain the honors due to their labors, which were most needful and important ones at those periods: by them were many of the casualties and sufferings of man and beast relieved; and by aid of perseverance, better constitutions to act upon, and faith to operate, than we possess, they probably effected cures, which we moderns should fail to accomplish if attempted.

Upon an old bank, tangled with bushes and rubbish, we find in abundance that very early translated, and perfectly domesticated flower, the cottage snowdrop (galanthus nivalis); a plant that is undoubtedly a native of our island, for I have seen it in situations where nature only could introduce it, where it was never planted by the hand of man, or strayed from any neighboring cultivation. Yet in most places where we find this flower, it is of manifest or suspicious origin; and with us it partakes of this latter character, though no remains of any ancient dwelling are observable near it. The damask rose, the daffodil, or the stock of an old bullace plum, will long remain, and point out where once a cottage existed; but all these, and most other tokens, in time waste away and decay; while the snowdrop will remain, increase, and become the only memorial of man and his labors. Many flowers present strong distinctive characters, or will, at least often do, excite in us variable feelings: the primrose, and the daisy, if not intrinsically gay, call forth cheerful and pleasing sensations; and the aspect or glance of some others will awaken different affections. The snowdrop is a melancholy flower. The season in which the “fair maids of February” come out, is the most dreary and desolate of our year: they peep through the snow that often surrounds them, shivering and cheerless: they convey no idea of reviving nature, and are scarcely the harbingers of milder days, but rather the emblem of sleety storms, and icy gales, (snowdrop weather), and wrap their petals round the infant germ, fearing to admit the very air that blows; and, when found beyond the verge of cultivation, they most generally remind us of some deserted dwelling, a family gone, a hearth that smokes no more. A lover of cold, it maintains the beautiful ovate form of its flower only in a low temperature; warmth expanding the petals, vitiating its grace, and destroying its character. It seems to preserve its native purity free from every contamination; it will become double, but never wanders into varieties, is never streaked or tinged with the hues of other flowers.

One of our pasture grasses is particularly affected by dry weather. Several are injured frequently by drought acting upon the stalk, not molesting the root, but withering the succulent base of the straw, which arises from the upper joint; in consequence of which, the panicle, and connecting straw, dry away, while the foliage and lower leaves remain uninjured. None are so obnoxious to this injury as the yellow oat-grass (avena flavescens), and in some seasons almost the whole of its panicles will be withered in a field of surrounding verdure. Pastures that are grazed must from circumstances be drier than those covered with herbage fit for the scythe; yet, from some unknown cause, this oat-grass seems less injured in this respect in grazing grounds, than in those where the herbage is reserved for mowing.

The plain, simple, unadorned vervain (verbena officinalis) is one of our most common, and decidedly waste-loving plants. Disinclined to all cultured places, it fixes its residence by way-sides, and old stone quarries, thriving under the feet of every passing creature. The celebrity that this plant obtained in very remote times, without its possessing one apparent quality, or presenting by its manner of growth, or form, any mysterious character to arrest the attention, or excite imagination is very extraordinary, and perhaps unaccountable: most nations venerated, esteemed, and used it; the ancients had their Verbenalia, at which period the temples and frequented places were strewed and sanctified with vervain; the beasts for sacrifice, and the altars, were verbenated, the one filleted, the other strewed, with the sacred herb; no incantation or lustration was perfect without the aid of this plant. That mistletoe should have excited attention in days of darkness and ignorance, is not a subject of surprise, from the extraordinary and obscure manner of its growth and propagation, and the season of the year in which it flourishes; for even the great lord Bacon ridicules the idea of its being propagated by the operations of a bird as an “idle tradition,” saying, that the sap which produces this plant is such as the “tree doth excerne and cannot assimilate.” These circumstances, and its great dissimilarity from the plant on which it vegetates, all combine to render it a subject of superstitious wonder: but that a lowly, ineffective herb like our vervain should have stimulated the imaginations of the priests of Rome, of Gaul, and of Greece, the magi of India, and the Druids of Britain, is passing comprehension; and, as Pennant observes, “so general a consent proves that the custom arose before the different nations had lost all communication with each other.” We might with some appearance of reason, perhaps, name the Druids of Gaul as the point, whence certain mysteries and observances were conveyed to the priesthood of various nations; but it would be difficult to assign a motive for their fixing upon such plants as vervain, and some others, to give efficacy to their ceremonies and rites. In some of the Welsh counties, vervain is known by the name of “Ilyssiaur hudol,” the enchanter’s plant. It seems to have had ascribed to it the power of curing the bites of all rabid animals, arresting the progress of the venom of serpents, reconciling antipathies, conciliating friendships, &c. Gerard, after detailing some of its virtues from Pliny, observes, that “many odde old wives’ fables are written of vervaine tending to witchcraft and sorcerie, which you may read elsewhere, for I am not willing to trouble you with reporting such trifles as honest ears abhorre to hear.” To us moderns its real virtues are unknown; regular practice does not allow that it possesses any medicinal efficacy, and its fanciful peculiarities are in no repute; yet it seems to hanker after its lost fame, and lingers around the dwellings of man; for though not solely found about our habitations, as Miller thought, yet generally, when perceived, it is near some inhabited or ruined residence, not as a stray from cultivation, but from preference. Our village doctresses, an almost extinct race of useful, valuable women, the consolers, the comforters, and often mitigators of the ailments of the poor, still make use of vervain tea as a strengthener, and the dried powder of its leaves as a vermifuge; but probably in another generation all the venerated virtues of the vervain will be consigned to oblivion. This plant seems to be the native growth of many districts in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The dyers’ weed, yellow weed, weld, or wold (reseda luteola), thrives in all our abandoned stone quarries, upon the rejected rubbish of the lime-kiln, and waste places of the roads, apparently a perfectly indigenous plant. Unmindful of frost, or of drought, it preserves a degree of verdure, when nearly all other vegetation is seared up by these extremes in exposed situations. It was, and is yet, I believe, cultivated in England for the use of the dyer. We import it, however, into Bristol from France; and it sells in that city for ten shillings per cwt. in a dry state. It gives a fine, permanent, yellow color to cottons, silks, and woollens, in a variety of shades, by the aid of alum, &c. A blue tincture changes these to as fine a green. Injury has certainly been occasioned by writers on agricultural affairs recommending, without due inquiry, the culture of this or that crop; and I would not incur a censure that I blame in another; yet I cannot but suggest the possible profit that might arise from the culture of this plant. If foreigners derive sufficient encouragement to import it, notwithstanding the charges of freight, port duties, and various consequent expenses, why can it not be grown with us, and afford superior remuneration, not having such deductions to diminish the profits? The culture of it seems very simple, the manner of conducting the crop, and harvesting the product, attended with little trouble or risk. Marshal prefers a good soil; others again say, that it becomes stalky in a rich soil. With us it grows luxuriantly, three or four feet high, on a thin, stony, undressed soil, apparently the very station it prefers; and we have about us much land of this kind, not intrinsically worth ten shillings an acre. It might be rash to predict the amount of a crop in such soils, but a ton to an acre is said to be but a small allowance; yet the produce of only this quantity, which would procure in the market a return of 10l. without any expenditure for manure, no more manual labor after the seed is sown, for nine months, than three thinnings, and cleanings with the hoe, and the crop harvested within the year, would be no trifling profit, and may be deserving of some consideration. The bark, the wood, the flower, the leaves of many of our native trees and plants afford a yellow dye; we have no color so easily produced as this is; and it is equally remarkable, that, amidst all the varied hues of spring, yellow is the most predominant in our wild and cultured plants. The primrose, cowslip, pilewort, globe-flower, butter-cup, cherlock, crocus, all the cabbage tribe, the dandelions, appear in this dress. The very first butterfly, that will

“aloft repair, And sport, and flutter in the fields of air,”

is the sulphur butterfly (gonepteryx rhamni), which in the bright sunny mornings of March we so often see under the warm hedge, or by the side of some sheltered copse, undulating, and vibrating like the petal of a primrose in the breeze. The blossoms of many of our plants afford for the decoration of the fair a vast variety of colors and intermediate tints; but they are all of them, or nearly so, inconstant or fugitive before the light of the sun, or mutable in the dampness of the air, except those obtained from yellow flowers: circumstances may vary the shade, but yet it is mostly permanent. Yellow is again the livery of autumn, in all the shades of ochre and of orange; the “sere and yellow leaf” becomes the general cast of the season, the sober brown comes next, and then decay.

Many impressions commonly fade away and become effaced as other objects create fresh sensations; but the love of nature, where the regard has been a settled principle, is more permanent, and influences the feelings as long as the occupations of life preserve any interest in our minds. As a child, I viewed the wild field flowers and cropped them with delight; as a young botanist, culled with rapture the various species, returning often and again to my almost exhaustless treasure in the copse; and even now, in the “sere and yellow leaf,” when, in some mild vernal evening, I stroll through the grove, see the same floral splendor which year after year has been spread before me, I mark it with admiration and surprise, find it enchanting still, and fancy the present loveliness superior to all that has been before. There we see that beautiful little brilliant of the earth, like the name it bears (day’s eye), cheerful and pleasing to all. The exquisite chasteness of mien, and form of this flower, the contrast of its colors, and simplicity of attitude which it displays when springing from out its grassy tuft, can hardly be surpassed by any from another region. By its side peeps out the bright gleeful blue eyes of the little germander speedwell, in joyful gaiety—a lowly domestic plant that loves and seeks alliance with its kind, and in small family associations, by united splendor, decorates the foliage around. And there we find the stitch-wort, mingling her snowy bloom immaculately pure, with pallid green: too delicate to vegetate alone, it seeks the shelter of the hedge or copse, trembles when the breeze goes by, and seems an emblem of innocence and grace. And there the bright-flowered lotus with its pealike bloom, in social union glows as burnished gold, animating and gilding with its lustre all the tribes that spring near it; and fifty others, too, we note, which, though common and disregarded by reason of our familiarity with them, or expelled from favor by the novelty of far-fetched fair ones, deserve more attention than we are disposed to afford them. There are few plants which we look upon with more perfect contempt than that common product of every soil, the ‘dandelion.’ Every child knows it, and the little village groups which perambulate the hedges for the first offspring of the year, amuse themselves by hanging circlets of its stalks linked like a chain round their necks: yet if we examine this in all the stages of its growth, we shall pronounce it a beautiful production; and its blossom, though often a solitary one, is perhaps the very first that enlivens the sunny bank of the hedge in the opening year, peeping out from withered leaves, dry stalks, and desolation, as a herald, telling us that nature is not dead, but reposing, and will awaken to life again. And some of us, perhaps, can remember the pleasure it afforded us in early days, when we first noticed its golden blossoms under the southern shelter of the cottage hedge, thinking that the ‘winter was past,’ and that ‘the time of the singing of birds was come;’ and yet, possibly, when seen, it may renew some of that childish delight, though the fervor of expectation is cooled by experience and time. The form of this flower, with its ligulate petals many times doubled is elegant and perfect; the brightness and liveliness of the yellow, like the warm rays of an evening sun, are not exceeded in any blossom, native or foreign, that I know of; and this, having faded away, is succeeded by a head of down, which loosened from its receptacle, and floating in the breeze, comes sailing calmly along before us, freighted with a seed at its base; but so accurately adjusted is its buoyant power to the burden it bears, that steadily passing on its way, it rests at last in some cleft or cranny in the earth, preparatory to its period of germination, appearing more like a flight of animated creatures than the seed of a plant. This is a very beautiful appointment! but so common an event as hardly to be noticed by us; yet it accomplishes effectually the designs of nature, and plants the species at distances and in places that no other contrivance could so easily and fitly effect. The seeds, it is true, might have fallen and germinated around the parent plant, but this was not the purpose of nature; yet may seem to some a very unnecessary contrivance for the propagation of a common dandelion, whose benefits to mankind as a medicine, though retained in our pharmacopœias, and occasionally resorted to, seem of no great importance. Nor are we sensible that its virtues are essential to any portion of the creation; but this very circumstance should abate our pride, our assumed pretensions of knowledge, as we may be assured that its existence, though hidden from us, is required in the great scheme of nature, or such elaborate and sufficient contrivances for its continuation and increase would never have been called into action by Nature, who is so remarkably simple in all her actions, economical in her ways, and frugal of her means.

Some very extraordinary vegetable productions are now on the table before me. Though not gathered in this neighborhood, I am induced to give them a place with our notables, because I believe that they have not been noticed, and afford a strong example of the persevering endeavors that plants exert at times to maintain existence. One of these is the tufted head and entire roots of a grass, gathered from a down fed by sheep from time immemorial. It is probably that of the hard fescue (festuca duriuscula), which, having been constantly eaten down by cattle, has never thrown up flowering stems, giving out only radical leaves. These appear to have been cropped short, as soon as they have sprung up, the less succulent and strawy portions only being left, like a ball upon the surface, as a bush constantly clipped by the gardener’s shears. The root appears to have annually increased, though the upper parts it was destined to nourish have been destroyed, until it became a lock of closely compacted fibres, like a tuft of hair, six or eight inches in length. Furze bushes, growing upon many downs in Wales, Devon, and Cornwall, assume commonly the appearance of large, green, dense balls, every tender leaf being constantly shorn away by the sheep and rabbits that frequent those places, and present, upon a larger scale, the very appearance of these grass balls. Our specimens are rather local than general, and were the produce of the Malvern hills.

The common brambles (rubus cæsius and fruticosus) may almost be considered as evergreens. Hedgers to be sure they are: but we have few, perhaps no other shrubby plant, naturally deciduous, excepting the privet, that will retain its verdure through the year, preserving, by a peculiar construction of its vessels, a portion of foliage unseared by frosts, and contending with gales that destroy and strip away all the honors of its neighbors. This circumstance enables us to observe a curious, strongly defined line upon the leaves, like a glossy whitish film, meandering over the surface, becoming progressively larger, with a fine intestinal-like line running through the centre. What occasioned this sinuous path long puzzled me satisfactorily to ascertain, considering it entirely of vegetable origin; and all the various polymorphous parasitics were successively thought of. At one time I deemed it like puccinia, which vegetates beneath the cuticle of leaves: but this was rejected; and probably I might long have wandered in error, had not the Rev. Mr. Kirby dissipated all my conjectures by informing me that it was the pathway of a small caterpillar. There are several species of them which are placed by Reaumur in a tribe called “mineuses,” all of which live upon the parenchyma, or pulpy substance found between the cuticles or skins of leaves, gradually increasing in size until matured for transformation to the chrysalis, when they eat their way through the leaf, ultimately becoming moths, remarkable for the brilliant metallic lustre of their wings, the fine central line being the rejectments of the creature in the infant stages of its growth. Though several plants afford sustenance to these races, we have none on which this tortuous path is more strongly defined than the leaves of brambles, and the ever-blowing rose. Notices of such incidents may perhaps be considered as too trifling to record; but the naturalist, from the habit of observing, sees many things not obvious to all persons: his province is to investigate all the operations of nature, and if he record them truly, he has done his duty; prolix and dull as his remarks will be to some, yet to another they may afford information, or tend to elucidate a conjecture. The bramble is a sadly reprobated plant, and I cannot say much in its favor as an independent individual, nor would I introduce it, to incommode by its society a thriving mound of white thorn or of crab: but it generally introduces itself, and will flourish greatly, where other and better fences languish, and then, by intertwining its long flexile runners with the weakly products of the hedge-row, will compose a guard, where without it we could with difficulty have raised one. It will intrude, however, into many places where it is not required, originating probably from the rejectments of birds, and become a very unwelcome and tenacious inhabitant. Its long tendrils are much used by us as binders for thatching, being pegged down to prevent the straw coverings of ricks and such things being carried away by the winds, and we are satisfied with its performances. By the assistance of the bramble also, the new-placed turf is secured on the graves of our poorer neighbors, until it unites and forms a uniform sod; and during this service it will occasionally root itself, and become an inhabitant not easily ejected from our church-yards. Badgers are said to feed much upon the fruit of the bramble. They are certainly very fat and fleshy about the time that the blackberry is ripe; but it is probable that the acorns and crabs, which it finds at the same season, contribute most to its nourishment.

The maple (acer campestre) is found growing in all our fences, generally reduced by the hedger’s bill to serve the same humble purposes as the thorns and sloes associated with it. Sometimes, however, it is permitted to assume the rank of a tree, when, if not possessing dignity, it is certainly beautiful, and becomes an ornament in the hedge-row. It is the earliest sylvan beau that is weary of its summer suit; first shifting its dress to ochery shades, then trying a deeper tint, and lastly assuming an orange vest; thus setting a fashion that ere long becomes the garb of all except the rustic oak, which looks regardlessly at the beau, and keeps its verdant robe unchanged. Soon tired of this, the maple takes a pattern from his sober neighbor ash, throws its gaudy trim away, and patiently awaits with all his peers the next new change. In spring the woodbine wreathes its knots of green around the rugged limbs of the maple; the rose beneath puts on its emerald gems, and then our gallant sir will wear such colors too, fluttering through all its summer’s day. When first the maple begins to autumnize the grove, the extremities of the boughs alone change their color, but all the internal and more sheltered parts still retain their verdure, which gives to the tree the effect of a great depth of shade, and displays advantageously the light, lively coloring of the sprays. We find the maple useful in our hedges, not from the opposition it affords, but by reason of its very quick growth from the stool after it has been cut, whence it makes a fence in a shorter time than most of its companions; and when firewood is an object, it soon becomes sufficiently large for this purpose. The singular ruggedness of the branches and shoots when they have attained a year’s growth, and the depth of the furrows, give it a strongly marked character among our shrubs. The under side of the leaves in autumn, when they become yellow, and dashed here and there with a few specks of red and brown, appear, when magnified, like a very beautiful and perfect mosaic pavement, with all its tesseræ arranged and fitted. If one of these rugged young shoots be cut through horizontally with a sharp knife, its cork-like bark presents the figure of a star with five or more rays, sometimes irregularly, but generally exactly defined. A thin slice from the surface is a beautiful and curious object in the microscope, exhibiting the different channels, and variously formed tubes, through which the sap flows, and the air circulates for the supply of all the diversified requirements of the plant; and it is good and delightful to contemplate the wonderful mechanism that has been devised by the Almighty Architect, for the sustenance and particular necessities of the simple maple, this “ditch trumpery,” as Gilpin calls it; which naturally leads one to consider that, if he have so regarded such humble objects, how much more has he accounted worthy of his beneficence the more highly destined orders of his creation! As Evelyn says, on another occasion, “I beg no pardon for this application, but deplore my no better use of it.” Modern practice records no medicinal virtues to be derived from the maple; but Pliny, in the quaint language of old Philemon Holland, tells us that a cataplasm made from the roots of this tree is “singular to be applied for the griefs of the liver, and worketh mightily.” In summer the leaves of the hedge-row maple often assume a whitish, mouldy look, which appears to be a mere exudation, as it neither presents any after-character, nor have I observed that any thing results from it. The young leaves, soon after their appearance in the spring, are beset with numerous fine spines of a bright red color, most probably occasioned by the puncture of some insect, though I have never been able to discover any of the larvæ inclosed in them. Some insects wound the leaves and sprays of plants for nutriment, though generally the object seems to be the formation of a nidus for their young, by the fluid that issues from the wound: but insects do something more than merely puncturing the parts to force a liquor to exude; a simple wound will not accomplish the desired object, as the sap not only hardens on the surface, but acquires a particular form and consistence, and even at times enlarges to a separate vegetable matter. The insect that wounds the leaf of the oak, and occasions the formation of the gall-nut, and those which are likewise the cause of the apple rising on the sprays of the same tree, and those flower-like leaves on the buds have performed very different operations, either by the instrument that inflicted the wound, or by the injection of some fluid to influence the action of the parts. That extraordinary hairy excrescence on the wild rose (cynips rosæ), likewise the result of an insect’s wounds, resembles no other nidus required for such creatures that we know of; and these red spines on the leaf of the maple are different again from others. It is useless to inquire into causes of which we probably can obtain no certain result, but, judging by the effects produced by different agents, we must conclude, that, as particular birds require and fabricate from age to age very different receptacles for their young, and make choice of dissimilar materials, though each species has the same instruments to effect it, where, generally speaking, no sufficient reasons for such variety of forms and texture is obvious, so it is fitting that insects should be furnished with a variety of powers and means to accomplish their requirements, having wants more urgent, their nests being at times to be so constructed as to resist the influence of seasons, to contain the young for much longer periods, even occasionally to furnish a supply of food, or be a storehouse to afford it when wanted by the infant brood.

The wild clematis, or traveller’s joy (clematis vitalba), thrives greatly in some of the dry stony parts of our parish, insinuating its roots into the clefts and passages of our limestone rocks, where those of many other plants could not find admission or support; and forms in our hedge-rows a heavy shapeless mass of runners and branches, encumbering and overpowering its neighbors; many of which it often destroys; and we see the clematis clinging round a few stinted, half- vegetating thorns, constituting the only fence, miserable as it is. The runners or branches are very strong and flexile, and are much used by our peasantry as a binding for hedge fagots. The tubes, lymph ducts, and air-vessels of this plant appear in a common magnifier beautifully arranged, being large, and admitting the air freely to circulate through them. Our village boys avail themselves of this circumstance, cut off a long joint from a dry branch, light it, and running about, use it as their seniors do the tobacco-pipe. They call it “smoke wood,” and the action of the breath constantly agitating the fire, it will long continue kindled. The pores are well seen by drawing some bright colored liquor into them. I have often observed the long feathered part of the seed at the entrance of holes made by mice on the banks, and probably in hard seasons the seed may yield these creatures part of their supply. The diversity of form and arrangement in the pores of the roots, stems, and branches of plants, and the nerves, air-vessels, and fibres of the leaves, are extremely wonderful and beautiful; and it is possible that all the genera, species, and varieties, have more or less a different conformation of some of these parts. It is from the agency of these vessels, imbibing both from the air and the earth, compounding, decomposing, and discharging, in a way we know little about, that the sweetness of our fruits, the oil, the bread, and wine to glad the heart of man, proceed; and grateful should we be for them. From the vegetable world man derives his chief enjoyments: much of his fuel, most of his food, and the chief of his clothing, have once circulated in the tubes of a plant. The clematis plant possesses the power of preserving its verdure, and even thriving, in situations and seasons, when most other shrubby vegetation fails or languishes. With us its roots run amid loose stones, and in rocky places, far from any spring or apparent moisture; and yet, in those uncommonly dry summers of 1825 and 1826, it seemed to flourish with more than usual vigor throwing out its long tendrils, of a fine healthy green color, adorned with a profusion of blossoms, itself and the bramble being in some places the only thriving vegetation in a fence. It is marvellous how fibrous-rooted vegetables, the roots of which penetrate no depth into the soil, are enabled in some seasons to preserve any appearance of verdure, the earth they are fixed in seeming divested of all moisture by the power of the sun, and being heated like a sand-bath. The warmth of the earth in 1825 I omitted to record; but in the following year, which was more dry, and nearly as hot, the thermometer buried in the earth to the depth of three inches, in a flower border where many plants were growing in that sort of languid state which they present in such exhausting seasons, indicated the heat of 110°.

Having said thus much of the clematis, the “withywind” of our peasantry, it must not be supposed that I advocate the advantages of this plant as a fence, but only tolerate it where we cannot induce much else to thrive, it making something of a boundary line; and perhaps that is all, for very frequently its numerous tendrils, and the downy clusters of its caudated seeds are so interwoven, that the snow accumulates upon the bush, and presses the whole to the earth, so that in the spring we commonly find a gap to be repaired where the clematis has thriven. About February, or towards the end of winter, this plant becomes stripped of its feathery seeds, which is accomplished by mice, I believe the harvest and the long-tailed one (mus sylvaticus) principally; with these they form nest-like beds in the upper and thickest part of the hedge, resorting to them in the day-time, where they enjoy in tolerable safety the air and warmth of the season, in preference to their cold and damp apartments in the earth, and I have occasionally disturbed them in their dormitories; but at this time it is not observed that the seeds are much fed upon by them, and probably are only collected as shelter in a temporary dwelling.

The little excursions of the naturalist, from habit and from acquirement, become a scene of constant observation and remark. The insect that crawls, the note of the bird, the plant that flowers, or the vernal green leaf that peeps out, engages his attention, is recognized as an intimate, or noted from some novelty that it presents in sound or aspect. Every season has its peculiar product, and is pleasing or admirable, from causes that variously affect our different temperaments or dispositions; but there are accompaniments in an autumnal morning’s woodland walk, that call for all our notice and admiration: the peculiar feeling of the air, and the solemn grandeur of the scene around us, dispose the mind to contemplation and remark; there is a silence in which we hear every thing, a beauty that will be observed. The stump of an old oak is a very landscape, with rugged alpine steeps bursting through forests of verdant mosses, with some pale, denuded, branchless lichen, like a scathed oak, creeping up the sides or crowning the summit. Rambling with unfettered grace, the tendrils of the briony (tamus communis) festoon with its brilliant berries, green, yellow, red, the slender sprigs of the hazel, or the thorn; it ornaments their plainness, and receives a support its own feebleness denies. The agaric, with all its hues, its shades, its elegant variety of forms, expands its cone sprinkled with the freshness of the morning; a transient fair, a child of decay, that “sprang up in a night, and will perish in a night.” The squirrel, agile with life and timidity, gamboling round the root of an ancient beech, its base overgrown with the dewberry (rubus cæsius), blue with unsullied fruit, impeded in his frolic sports, half angry, darts up the silvery bole again, to peep and wonder at the strange intruder on his haunts. The jay springs up, and, screaming, tells of danger to her brood; the noisy tribe repeat the call, are hushed, and leave us; the loud laugh of the woodpecker, joyous and vacant; the hammering of the nuthatch (sitta europæa), cleaving its prize in the chink of some dry bough; the humblebee, torpid on the disk of the purple thistle, just lifts a limb to pray forbearance of injury, to ask for peace, and bid us

“Leave him, leave him to repose.”

The cinquefoil, or the vetch, with one lingering bloom yet appears, and we note it from its loneliness. Spreading on the light foliage of the fern, dry and mature, the spider has fixed her toils, and motionless in the midst watches her expected prey, every thread and mesh beaded with dew, trembling with the zephyr’s breath. Then falls the “sere and yellow leaf,” parting from its spray without a breeze tinkling in the boughs, and rustling scarce audibly along, rests at our feet, and tells us that we part too. All these are distinctive symbols of the season, marked in the silence and sobriety of the hour; and form, perhaps, a deeper impression on the mind, than any afforded by the verdant promises, the vivacities of spring, or the gay, profuse luxuriance of summer.