1123 



In this respect it resembles exactly the Linnea borealis. Whence 

 have their seeds come ? Have they lain buried and dormant in the 

 soil since the ante-Roman period, when all this part of the country 

 was covered with a forest ? I think it not improbable. They were 

 the fair flowers that were wede away with the destruction and aboli- 

 tion of the shelter and shade that fostered their growth ; and that 

 shade being restored, they again revive and occupy their ancient 

 haunts. They are peculiarly wild plants, and dislike civilization ; 

 and when we get amongst them, we feel as if the spirit was freed from 

 bondage, and might be left safely to take its flight and freaks, ' play- 

 ing with words and idle similes.' " — P. 139. 



The familiar foxglove has the following illustrative passage : — 

 " Foxglove. Often very ornamental in deans, and on rocky ledges 

 that overhang the deep pools of our brattling burns : — 



' I've lingered oft by rocky dells 

 Where streamlets wind with murmuring din, 

 And marked the Foxglove's purple bells, 

 Hang nodding o'er the dimpled lin.' 



This plant is one of the wonderful ingredients used as * bath ' for 

 sheep, but some shepherds object to its use, for they say that it black- 

 ens the wool very much. The leaves afford a medicine of great 

 energy and value ; and before this was known to physicians the fox- 

 glove or fox-tree was frequently administered by the bold country 

 quack, not always with impunity. See Dalyell's ' Darker Supersti- 

 tions,' p. 113. — About Greenlaw the plant from its stateliness bears 

 the elegant name of the King's elwand : — 



' Straight as the Foxglove, ere her bells disclose.' 



The flowers were once applied to the purpose of caps by the troops 

 of fairies that did inhabit our deans and sylvan retreats ; now our lit- 

 tle girls glove their fingers with them, putting them on the top of each 

 other in a pyramid to overflowing, and they call them ladies' thimbles. 

 Boys inflate them by blowing into the bell, then they crack them by 

 a smart stroke. They also suck the honey at the base of the flower. 

 Tempted by this nectar, the bee enters deep within the corolla, where, 

 becoming imprisoned, it buzzes about with vexation and rage. 



" The foxglove, pronounced to be * the most stately and beautiful 

 of our herbaceous plants,' could not, of course, escape the eye of 

 Wordsworth ; and he has given in the ' Prelude ' to ' Retrospect,' p. 

 223, a correct enough portrait of the plant in its last stage, or old 

 age:— 



