57 



Each cottage garden's fond adopted child, 



Though heaths still claim them where they yet grow wild."* 



For my own part, I have been accustomed to meet with the colum- 

 bine in haimts far removed from public view, and in thickets distant 

 enough even from cottage smolce ; but it seems to be lost sight of by 

 many persons how frequently the root of a pretty wild-flower is dug 

 up from the place of its nativity and transplanted to a garden : this 

 was done to a far greater extent formerl}' than it is now. Words- 

 worth tastifies to the practice of the cottagers of Cumberland and 

 Westmoreland. 



" Brought from the woods, the honeysuckle twines 

 Around the porch, and seems in that trim place 

 A plant no longer wild ; the cultur'd rose 

 There blossoms, strong in health, and will be soon 

 Roof-high ; the wild pink crowns the garden wall, 

 And with the flowers are intermingled stones 

 Sparry and bright, rough scatterings of the hills."f 



* I have frequently thought that the testimony of some of our rural poets, men with 

 keenly-observant eyes, might in some cases be as good as a botanist's for the localities 

 of plants, and not undeserving of record either. Take for instance the following 

 from Drayton's ' Nymphidia : ' — 



" And for the queen a fitting bow'r, 

 (Quoth he) is that fair cowslip-flow'r. 



On Hipcut Hill that groweth ; 

 In all your train there's not a fay 

 That ever went to gather May, 

 But she hath made it in her way 

 The tallest there that groweth." 



This Hipcut Hill I presume is in Warwickshire, and perhaps Mr. Bree could tell 

 us whether it is as famed for its oxlips now as it seems to have been in Drayton's 

 time. Wordsworth in one of his poems has celebrated the daflFodils of the Lake dis- 

 trict, and their abundance, though I recollect no botanical record of the fact, perhaps 

 from " wandering botanists " not being on the alert at the early season when the Nar- 

 cissus Pseudo-narcissus appears. 



" They stretched in never-ending line 

 Along the margin of a bay : 

 Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 

 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance." 

 Grahame in the homely strains of his ' Birds of Scotland' refers to the Herb Paris, 

 and the habitats of other shrubs and flowers, in a pictorial way as adornments of the 

 actual landscape. A considerable collection might be made out from various sources. 



t ' Excursion,' p. 280. 



Vol. IV. T 



