136 



to the truly woodland columbine. * The nettle is really per- 

 ceived constantly attendant upon the skirts of civilization, as if it 

 had claims upon human regard, or was fostered as an ancient fol- 

 lower ; and we can no more get rid of it than an unfortunate author 

 can hope to settle down with his book in the literary world without a 

 stinging critique springing up at its side. So the nettle will sidle 

 down upon us, and it is of little use to lift the hand to it, whether as a 

 friend or a foe ! I noticed in 1849 a meadow in the Blockhouse, 

 Worcester, which by degrees had got surrounded by houses, until, 

 hemmed in, it could scarcely get a peep of the distant country. It 

 had produced most excellent crops of hay in former years, and its 

 owner still fondly nourished it for pasture. But at this time the net- 

 tles had marked it for their own, and a most powerful irruption they 

 had made, for full half of the field was overgrown by the tallest and 

 rankest crop of nettles and creeping thistles {Cnicus arvensis) that I 

 ever beheld in the whole course of my observation. The swathe that 

 year was not of a very desirable kind. 



The wandering botanist who re-visits old favourite localities has too 

 often reason to remember the Horatian adage, "Naturam expellesfurca" 

 — man turns out nature with his improvements — when he looks in vain 

 for well-remembered plants in the spots where he once gathered them. 

 This I have often had to deplore, and the great extension of Malvern 

 in recent years, still going on, has caused the destruction of many a 

 pretty boggy coppice there, and the extermination of its flowers. 

 Nature is stripped of her bridal robe of beauty, and soon — 



" chok'd up with sorrow's weeds." 



The lady-fern and the bog-pimpernel are destroyed, and the ragwort, 

 dock, and goose-foot take their place. 



Within a very short distance of where I now reside — a few stones' 

 throws only — there still remained unscathed till within the last three 

 years a beautiful little wood, called Birchin Grove, quite heathy and 

 almost subalpine in its aspect, with its birch-trees silver-columned, 

 service-trees [Pyrus Aucuparia), tall shrubs of Rhamnus Frangula, 

 bushes of Rosa toraentosa, &c., besides various hawk-weeds, bell- 

 flowers, and ferns, and the delicate Convallaria majalis in the mossy 

 shade. Here also I had a preserve of the most remarkable and rarer 

 Rubi constantly to refer to, as R. suberectus, R. affinis, R. sylvaticus, 



* The columbine is starred as an introduced phmt in the ' British Flora ' of 

 Hooker and Arnott. 



