and blossom. The diameter of the pimpernel’s 
circle of growth was thirty inches, that of the 
spurge twenty-six inches. The branches were 
exceedingly numerous, and the flowerets and 
leaflets more so. On one-half inch of the spurge 
I counted ten flowers and twenty leaflets. Seen 
through a pocket lens, these flowers look like a 
small button rose and quite as beautiful. 
Sixty-five Species on One Lot. 
On this lot, abandoned only one year, are 
growing sixty-five species of wild flowering 
plants, many of which my class would recognize. 
If I could hand them one of these little pimper- 
nels, not larger than my hand, that hold their 
scarlet flowers not more than two inches above 
the sandy beach they hug so closely, they might 
wonder and perhaps ask where I saw the beauty 
cf which I write. I find it has stirred one poet’s 
heart and set a sympathetic pen in motion. Miss 
Emily Shaw Farman writes: 
“Bright little wayfarer in scarlet cap, 
With purple tuft atop and doublet green, 
Flora’s pet page sometime thou must have been, 
Fallen from favor by some strange mishap; 
It touches me to note the calm content 
With which thou dost accept thy lowly lot, 
And makest gay some poor, neglected spot 
With thy glad presence; pitching thy small tent 
Upon the farmer’s homely garden path, 
Or close beside the dusty roadside way; 
Heedless of high or low, if but a ray 
Of heaven’s golden sunshine thou canst catch, 
Watching and waiting, living not in vain — 
A tiny prophet of the coming rain.” 
39 
