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and this was where a new house had not been long erected, and the 

 garden was also fresh formed. 



Oftener, doubtless, on broken-up land newly-deposited plants will 

 appear than old inhabitants be resuscitated. Fly-away seeds, looking 

 out like vultures for their prey, instinctively settle down upon any bit 

 of waste or fresh turned-up soil to revel in, and so last year I observed 

 the great Cnicus eriophorus very incongruously filling up the intervals 

 in a gentleman's shrubbery at Powick, that had only recently been put 

 into fresh order ; and this in the very front of the mansion, an aggres- 

 sion not likely to be long permitted. 



These facts of vegetable migration, though common enough to the 

 experience of those who look out for them, ought not to be slurred 

 over as undeserving of notice. They point out a law of nature ever 

 in action, tending constantly to vary the vegetable robe of the earth, 

 and give a rotation or right of enjoyment to different species on the 

 same ground. It is really a curious thing to see what the operation 

 of a spade will effect, and what desecration to the beautiful ensues. 

 I was much struck with this in rambling some time since through 

 Wyre Forest. I suddenly came from embowering oaks and mossy 

 glades, bright with the wood geranium, Habenaria, Epipactis, &c., 

 upon a little patch in the very heart of the green wood, which some 

 charcoal-burner had appropriated for a season for potatoes, and then 

 left in its abandonment. Mulleins, thistles, docks, Atriplices, snake- 

 weeds, nettles, and all their abominable kindred had here viciously 

 met together, as if by mutual compact, to give ugliness its full scope, 

 and intimating but too well the track of mortal footsteps. Yet the 

 forest loomed in its shadowy immensity on all sides, nothing but 

 beauty and suggestive tranquillity within its mossy recesses ; no simi- 

 lar plants existed but at a long distance from the spot, and it seemed 

 strange how these monstrous weeds could have got notice of the va- 

 cuity in their murky haunts, and progressed hither over fair untainted 

 scenes, like a crowd of " the fancy," to fight their obscene battles. 



I remember meeting with an old collecting herbalist, a little eccen- 

 tric in his way, who, in a conversation about indigenous herbs, 

 asserted that he could scarcely believe the nettle to be a wild plant, 

 at least in this country. He said that time out of mind it had been 

 used for food, and was formerly extensively so, as well as for 

 spinning into nettle-cloth, and could therefore now only be found 

 in man's vicinity, or established in places he had once inhabited. 

 One may smile at the worthy simpler's idea, but I should feel 

 less reluctance to object to the nettle as an ill-starred plant than 



