THISTLES. 105 



especially with the plowshare. Thus the very efforts we make at 

 fighting Nature defeat themselves : if we persistently hoe down the 

 stems and leaves of an obnoxious weed, the weed retaliates by send- 

 ing out hidden subterranean suckers, and the last state of the agricult- 

 urist is worse than the first. 



On the close-cropped chalk downs of our southern counties there is 

 another curious form, the stemless thistle, which shows in another way 

 the hard struggle of Nature to keep up appearances under the most 

 difficult and apparently hopeless circumstances. Among the low sward 

 of those chalky pastures, nibbled off incessantly as fast as it springs 

 up by whole herds of Southdowns, no plant that normally raised its 

 head an inch above the surface would have a chance of flowering with- 

 out being eaten down at once by its ruthless enemies. So the local 

 dwarf or stemless thistle has adopted a habit of expanding its very 

 prickly leaves in a flat rosette or spreading tuft close to the ground, 

 and bearing its blossoms on the level of the soil, pressed as tight as 

 possible against the short turf beneath. The appearance of these three 

 or four dwarfed and stunted but big flower-heads, bunched thickly 

 together in the middle of their flat leaves, is most quaint and striking 

 when once one's attention is called to their existence : yet so unobtru- 

 sive and unnoticeable is the entire plant that few people save regular 

 botanists ever discover the very fact of its presence on the chalk 

 downs. It is only one out of a large group of specialized chalk 

 plants, all of which similarly creep close to the ground, while a few 

 of them actually bury their own seeds in the soil by a corkscrew 

 process, so as to escape the teeth of the all-devouring sheep. The 

 power of producing a stem, however, is rather dormant than lost in 

 the dwarf thistle, for under favorable circumstances and in deep 

 soil it will raise its flowers eight or ten inches above the surround- 

 ing turf. 



The question what particular plant ought to be identified with the 

 stiff, heraldic Scotch thistle has long been debated, somewhat use- 

 lessly, it must be acknowledged, among botanists and antiquaries. 

 For heraldry is not particular as to species and genus : it is amply 

 satisfied with a general rough resemblance w T hich would hardly suit 

 the minute requirements of those microscopical observers who distin- 

 guish some forty kinds of native British blackberries. However, it 

 has been amicably decided in the long run that the heraldic symbol 

 of Scotland, that proud plant which no man injures unavenged, is not 

 to be considered a thistle at all, but an onopord, a member of a neigh- 

 boring though distinct genus, whose Greek name expressly marks it 

 out as the favorite food of— how shall I put it with becoming dig- 

 nity ? — the domestic beast of Oriental monarchs. To what base uses 

 may we come at last ! The royal emblem of the north, as identified 

 by Mr. Bentham and other profound authorities, is now at last settled 

 to be nothing more nor less than the cottony donkey -thistle. North 



