601 



fact, only its name and its form, without a history of any economical 

 kind whatever. We do, it is true, know of a certain water-cobbler, but 

 he could not get at our awl-wort, for he lives in the sea, and the 

 mountain ponds or elevated lakes are inaccessible to him ; with this 

 difficulty before us, we cannot draw our plant into a legend with any 

 facility, so we must record its residence in our poet Moore's lines, 

 which will give it some touch of immortality : — 



" ' On Lough Neagb's banks as the fisherman strays, 

 At the cold clear eve's declining, 

 He sees the round towers of other days 

 In the waves beneath him shining.' 



" Close by stones and broken rubble, where the poet may imagine 

 ancient fallen towers lie half imbedded in the lake, the Subularia ap- 

 pears ; it is the Irish rush-cress — an admirably adapted name, con- 

 structed from its rush-like leaves and its cress-like blossom. This 

 interesting little native ought to be in every aquatic garden. If 

 planted in a pot of gravel with a little clay, and sunk in a quiet 

 stream, it will grow readily ; and then may be noticed by the curious, 

 with facility, the unique fact of a flower in full bloom under the water. 

 It is very probable, however, that the distribution of the po^en on the 

 stigmas takes place before the petals open, and that in this way 

 impregnation is secured ; although the most usual fertilization of 

 seeds takes place after the flower expands in the air." — P. 227. 



Having now accompanied our author as far as the awl-wort, with 

 which his present volume concludes, so now must we also conclude, 

 by saying that taking it " for all in aW," we can conscientiously com- 

 mend the book to the notice of our readers, as being in a great mea- 

 sure calculated to increase the number of admirers of those floral 

 treasures which are so profusely scattered among the green lanes, the 

 " little roads " and bye-ways of our native land. As in this, our 

 wishes coincide with his own, we may almost take for a motto to our 

 annual volume the following passage, in which we take leave of the 

 ' Walks after Wild Flowers.' 



" I want," says the author, " to give pleasure to pedestrians ; I want 

 to make them god-fathers and god-mothers to all the new births of the 

 teeming spring, and to call them by their names, and know them, and 

 by taking knowledge of them to love them. I want every summer 

 flower to be appreciated ; and the seed and fruit of autumn to be un- 

 derstood and welcomed ; as to winter, when it comes, for the season 

 which is truly naked and bare never comes in our emerald isle, the 



