288 WILD FLOWERS OF 



or Brambles. Wherever the bramble fixes its position 

 it levies a tax on all passers especially cattle and 

 sheep, whose hairs and wool often give a sad ragged 

 aspect to the hedge side, reflecting upon the slovenly 

 farmer. Yet in the economy of nature nothing is 

 thrown away, goldfinches, redstarts, linnets, and vari- 

 ous families of warblers resort to this magazine of 

 wool so providentially prepared for them ; and, in the 

 neglected " annals of the poor," even here a last sad 

 resource is presented, to save humble poverty from 

 actual starvation. CLABE, the Northamptonshire 

 peasant, has thus, in his homely strains, truly but 

 feelingly depicted the occupation of the wool- 

 gatherer : 



" In grief pursuing every chance to live, 

 That timely toils in seasons please to give ; 

 Through hot and cold, come weather as it will, 

 Striving with pain and disappointment still ; 

 Just keeping up expiring life's last fire, 

 That pining, lingers ready to expire ; 

 The winter through, near barefoot, left to pull 

 From bramble twigs her little mites of wool; 

 A hard-earned sixpence when her mops are spun, 

 By many a walk and aching fingers won." 



The Bramble, indeed, is peculiarly adapted for the 

 poor man's use ; he cuts its flexile stems as binders 

 for his thatching, and it finally binds down that mound 

 beneath which he takes the long last sleep with his 

 rude forefathers. 



In a botanical point of view the species or forms of 

 brambles are very difficult to discriminate, perhaps 

 with the exception of the Raspberry (_5J. Idcsus), the 

 Dewberry (JR. ccesius), and the common well-known 

 R.fruticosus, of English Botany, or discolor, as gene- 



