32 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



which are at once suggestive and ornamental. In many 

 districts, especially those in which there are now large farms, 

 one may count half a dozen such sites on a single posses- 

 sion ; and you can hardly traverse a mile of country without 

 having your memory nudged by those living witnesses of 

 other times : 



Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 

 And still where many a garden flower grows wild, 



There where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 

 The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 



It needs but a step or two, however, of the march of time 

 to bear away those objective traces of the homes of our 

 fathers ; and then, though an agriculturalist can sometimes 

 point you the spot where an excess of humus proves the 

 existence of the kitchen garden, or, as its possessors would 

 have more justly termed it, the " kail-yard," of an ancestor 

 six or eight times removed, there is for most people no trace 

 of the homestead, nor sign to show that here or there poor 

 toilworn cottars had their repose and reinvigoration for half 

 a century or more. 



The botanist, as he comes over the ground, can frequently 

 tell, after every other observer has failed, that at this spot 

 or at that there stood in bygone times the habitation of 

 human beings. He picks out from the dyke side or the old 

 pathway some plants which our forefathers valued either 

 for food or for medicine. Possessing the power of reproduc- 

 ing their kind, and of planting their sons to reign in their 

 stead for hundreds of generations, they await the time when 

 the man of flowers comes to read their lessons, and to note 

 that they were first sown here by folks long dead, whose sole 

 memorials they now are. 



Some herbs included in such a category might appear 

 scarcely worthy of a place, but we must not forget how, 

 with all other advances, the vegetable world has also taken 

 forward strides. As a professor of botany remarked, " We 

 can have little idea of the plants which our forefathers 

 valued, so greatly has the gardener improved the original 

 weeds." 



The Smear Dock (Cheiiopodiuin Bonus -Henricus) is one 

 of the most common of such plants. There are still gardens 



