YELLOW IRLS 167 



to sight and presently dispersed. As the fruit scarcely 

 begins to put in an appearance until after the flowers have 

 ceased, many who have been attracted by its yellow 

 blossoms may have failed to notice the plant in this 

 later stage. 



Nature, we need scarcely say, while rigidly obedient 

 to law, system, and order, and altogether out of sympathy 

 with the casual and the happy-go-lucky, is also full of 

 charming variety ; and, while the geometrician lays out 

 with mathematical precision his equilateral triangle, and 

 the designer, having drawn one half of .his leaf, takes a 

 piece of tracing paper and makes the other half like unto 

 it, Nature declines to be bound within conditions so 

 rigid. We would venture to say that if we sought to 

 find two leaves exactly alike in size, veining, and outline 

 in a hundred gathered at random from any tree, our quest 

 would be in vain. There is in Nature a wonderful 

 unity in variety ; there is no less a wonderful variety 

 in unity. 



The farmer in these latter days, either by hay, good 

 pasturage, or well-grown crops of swedes, turnips, or other 

 roots, is able to feed his stock without going outside the 

 store that his meadows or arable land will yield him ; but in 

 earlier days outside help had often to be invoked, and then, 

 amongst many other things never thought of nowadays, 

 the leaves of the iris were gathered, dried, and carried 

 off to supplement the store of fodder. Apart from this, 

 our forefathers found, as they did for almost everything 

 else that grew, divers uses for the iris, using its leaves 

 for thatching, or for the seating of chairs, roasting its 

 seeds, coffee-fashion, as a beverage, and also, of course. 



