30 WILD FLOWEBS OF 



tunity to gather the specimens his herbarium requires ; 

 and, local as many plants are, the sight of a rare one 

 only the more inspires him to gather it for himself, in 

 its native place of growth. With every excursion 

 additional knowledge is gained, and new stores are 

 opened to the thoughtful observer, while the idea of 



" fresh fields and pastures new," 

 is a constant stimulant to effort and research. 



Nor are botanical facts, relative to the appearance 

 and flowering of plants, and their peculiar beauties 

 and localities, alone gathered and treasured up by the 

 looker-out. Nature in her various aspects the gloomy 

 dingle the rocky wild the broken ravine the 

 expanded lake the precipitous rock the foaming 

 waterfall all these mantled in misty sublimity, 

 lovely in the mild tranquil morning, or gorgeous with 

 the reflected light of sunset, present a series of 

 poetical pictures, whose transcript ever remains im- 

 pressed upon the memory, to rise up and delight the 

 fancy in after hours of solitary quietude, inciting and 

 resuscitating thought. Thus the brooding mind stores 

 up its gathered images and recalls them to view, as 

 the teeming moisture in the spring and autumn, 

 breathing upon dead sticks and fallen leaves, invests 

 them with a fungous growth of beauty and rich colour 

 almost marvellous to behold ; with none more curious 

 perhaps than the little sanguine Sphceria on blackened 

 hawthorn stems. 



The botanist in quest of plants sees many a wild 

 that escapes even the lover of picturesque landscape 

 scenery, he has always an object in his walks, and 

 hence his rambles are not made in vain, at any period 

 of the year, though the previous knowledge of what is 



