160 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
the roots of other plants, into which the sprouting seed 
sends its suckers. How far they depend upon such 
nutriment is not quite certain, and some of the accused 
have been reared apart from all other plants, but it 
must be confessed that they were very stunted specimens. 
Their chief British representatives are the Louseworts, 
Yellow Rattles, Cow-wheats, and the beautiful little 
Eyebright, which may be found plentifully on dry 
pastures where the grass is short. Upon these grass 
roots it makes itself an unwelcome guest, fastening tiny 
suckers upon them from its rootlets, and robbing them 
of the minerals they have been at such pains to collect 
and dissolve for the making of protoplasm. The Eye- 
bright plant is attractive enough, shrubby in form, from 
three to six inches high, with many small, toothed leaves, 
and exquisite flowers, milk-white, veined with purple, and 
having a bright yellow spot in the middle, to guide the 
insects to its stores of honey. Upon the strength of its 
vigorous life in the air, apart from its doings underground, 
and the charitable suggestion of some learned botanists 
that, being an annual, at the end of the year it probably 
restores its living material to the host, by way of the 
plundered root, I have left it among the respectable 
plants, instead of relegating it to the “awful examples ” 
of the chapter of Parasites. 
The Convolvulus order I must leave, and hasten on to 
the Solanacee, or Nightshade tribe, a very important family 
in many ways, but not of deep interest botanically. But 
when you know that the underground stem of one is the 
Potato, the fruit of another the Tomato, the leaf of 
another Tobacco, you will agree that we could not leave 
them unmentioned. In England, however, we have not 
many species. The most striking is the Woody Night- 
