FEBRUARY 39 



of voices that at last break the stillness which has held it for 

 the weeks past, that arise from the men engaged in pruning 

 the fruit bushes. Those bushes which have received their 

 attention are now evenly shaped, while from a distance these 

 bushes seem dotted with white, showing very plainly where 

 the pruner's knife has been. In this same place how sweetly 

 the birds sing : it seems as though the message the snowdrop 

 whispers they tell forth in their songs. 



Along the hedgerows the ground-ivy and the dead-nettles 

 are showing their first tint of lighter green ; shepherd's-purse 

 and dandelion also make their presence known along the 

 roadsides. But these are only weeds, some will say ; truly, in 

 one sense they are, but they are the flowers of Nature's own 

 garden. " Weeds ? " asks Professor Miall, " What is a weed ? 

 A plant that persists in coming up where it is not wanted. 

 Weeds may be beautiful ; at least, few of us would deny 

 beauty to the poppy, and the dandelion, and the corncockle." 

 Many accomplished writers have spoken a good word for the 

 despised weeds. " There is a sort of sadness about them," 

 says Nathaniel Hawthorne ; " perhaps if we could penetrate 

 Nature's secrets we should find that what we call weeds are 

 more essential to the well-being of the world than the most 

 precious fruit or grain." Canon Ellacombe's " In a Gloucester 

 Garden " tells us " A weed is a good plant in a wrong place. 

 I say a good plant advisedly, having a full faith that where 

 Nature plants it, it fills a right place. Daisies are not, 

 perhaps, in their right place in lawns, but I should be sorry 

 to see my lawn quite free from them, and so, I am sure, would 

 the children." 



So at this season, when the groundsel comes tipped with 



