154 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



to general admiration an admiration that the stately 

 dignity and grace of the flower fully merit. One very 

 fair test of the appreciation in which a plant is popularly 

 held, is that its admirers transfer it from its native home 

 that they may be able, in their gardens, to have more 

 frequent opportunity of enjoying its beauty. This test is 

 not of universal application, as some plants are too fragile 

 to bear removal kindly, or too much wedded by nature to 

 their wild homes to thrive in alien soil; but it may be 

 accepted in a general way. Amongst the plants thus 

 transplanted, we frequently find the foxglove; we, only 

 this summer, saw a large garden in which there were 

 hundreds of them in full blossom, and very beautiful they 

 looked, rising in rows and masses behind the smaller plants 

 in the borders and shrubberies. It appears to bear removal 

 better than most plants, though any one who would see 

 the foxglove in perfection, must see it as it rises from 

 amongst the rocky debris on the mountain-side. In some 

 parts of Wales and Devonshire we have seen it growing 

 in such profusion, that hundreds of its long flowering 

 stems could have been gathered in a space so limited, that 

 to mention it would lay one open to a charge of gross 

 exaggeration from those who have never had the good 

 fortune to see a sight so beautiful. It may also com- 

 monly be met with in woods and on the hedge-banks 

 throughout the greater part of Britain, though in some 

 districts it is rarely or never met with in a wild state. 

 The foxgloves in the garden that we have already referred 

 to were the more prized because, though they throve 

 excellently well, they were unknown in a natural state 

 for miles and miles round. It appears to us curious that 

 the plants should thrive and blossom abundantly in a 



