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a mild and dripping spring, but they could not fight against the 
long continuance of bright suns and a dry atmosphere, and many 
of them died. That then was one item on the wrong side of the 
account ; another was the great abundance and luxuriance of the 
weeds. The abundance cannot altogether be put down to the 
bright summer ; it arose from the wet autumns of the two previous 
years when the destruction of the weeds was almost an 
impossibility. In that way they had become well established, 
and then they seemed to revel in the bright sunshine of this year. 
I will name two particularly. I never saw dandelions so abundant 
or so magnificent. I very much admire the dandelion ; in leaf, 
flower and seed, it is one of the most beautiful plants I know, 
and I often wish it was not such a weed that I might grow it as 
one of our most brilliant flowers. This year it surpassed itself in 
brilliancy, and I often stopped to admire the size and the depth 
of colour of the flowers in the hedgerows ; and I was not, and 
indeed never have been, surprised at the praises it has won from 
some of our best poets, such as Tennyson and Jean Ingelow. 
The bright sun, and still air also produced the beautiful heads of 
seed in great perfection and I am afraid in too great abundance ; 
and many of you will remember the grand specimens that we 
gathered in the churchyard of Malmesbury Abbey of its near 
relation, the wild salsafy. The other weed that was produced 
this year as abundantly, and even more unpleasantly, was grass. 
It is quite remarkable how our flower beds have become almost 
covered with strong plants of grass; I am sure that in my own 
garden there are several borders which would by this time have been 
quite covered if let alone. This is easily explained. There has 
been exceeding little lawn mowing this year. The lawns like 
the fields produced no growing grass for many weeks, but 
on the lawns, as in the fields, the grasses, though very dwarf, 
went to seed, and the seed was scattered on the borders which were 
well warmed and ready to receive them, and there they soon 
germinated, and produced abundance of plants. The same thing 
