WOOD-CRAFT. 43 



with other than intense interest. It is the only 

 species of woody monocotyledonous plant we have 

 in England — the only representative of the woody- 

 stemmed Palms, etc., of the tropics — submissively 

 growing beneath the shade of trees which came 

 into existence ages after its own family had occupied 

 the proud position of aristocrats in the vegetable 

 world. What a story of quiet suffering and struggling 

 with these plutocratic newcomers does the fact that 

 the Butcher's Broom has no leaves, but only cladodes, 

 tell us ! Leaves with it have long since disappeared. 

 Profitable as they usually are, the plant could not 

 make ends meet ; and so the branches flattened 

 themselves, became covered with stomata (or carbon- 

 feeding mouths), and performed, and do still perform, 

 all the functions of true leaves. Edwin Waugh, 

 the well-known Lancashire poet, expresses a great 

 botanical truth, although in the broadest vernacular, 

 in his lines — 



" For Daisies liven weel 

 Wheer' Tulips connot grow." 



Of those lower members of the vegetable world 

 which, like Uriah Heep, prefer to be humble — such 

 as Mosses and Lichens — we cannot say much. They 

 never appear to have " had their day," like other 

 great orders of plants. The existing Club-mosses 

 once grew to the magnitude of forest trees, as 

 Lepidodendron, Sigillaria, etc. ; even the diminutive 



