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the most beautiful wild flower we have. Its bearded pink- and 

 wliite flowers, standing straight up from the mossy pool, matted 

 with their thick and floating rootstock, have an appearance that 

 when once seen is not easily forgotten. Only this summer, while 

 on one of our local mosses, during the nesting-time of the Black, 

 headed Gull, I counted on these floating rootstocks of the Bog 

 Bean, many of them thicker than my thumb, and in a pool not 

 half the size of this room, thirteen nests of the above bird, each 

 nest containing its complement of three eggs. Many pieces of 

 rootstock were floating about, and were cut as clean as with a 

 knife, by the bills of these Gulls, to form cross-pieces for the 

 foundation of their nests. Of the properties of the Bog Bean I 

 might enlarge for some time ; it is greatly used in many places for 

 rheumatism ; it has often been used in imparting a bitter flavour 

 to beer, in place of hops ; for tanning purposes, etc. I know one 

 man who goes every year to Cumwhitton Moss to gather it, for 

 medicinal purposes. The nearest place to Carlisle where it may 

 be found is a wood behind the Asylum. 



The Jacob's Ladder, order Polemoniace^, P. cceruleum, I have 

 not found wild ; with us it is a garden plant. 



The order Convolvulace^e furnishes us with two species, 

 Convolvulus arvensis and C. sepium. The former of these two 

 plants might have been seen this year growing plentifully among 

 the nettles on the Castle Bank, though it is generally an inhabitant 

 of cornfields. The Great Bindweed hangs out its large but fragile 

 bells from many a hedge and thicket. Almost anywhere on the 

 banks of the Eden, where there is a luxuriant wild-growth, you will 

 find it, here gathering together a few twigs of willows, or tufts of 

 grass ; there twining its way up to the light by the help of the Giant 

 Groundsel or the Meadow Rue, making, as it were, step-ladders of 

 much stronger-stemmed plants than itself. Thus, by what Dr. 

 Taylor calls "woodcraft," it hangs out its white blossoms to sun 

 and breeze and insect, in order, not only to preserve its place 

 among other wild flowers, but also by the maturing of its seeds to 

 spread its species further abroad. Of the parasitic genus in this 



