154 FAMILIAR WILT) FLOWERS. 



the belle of the village and her rivals. The fumitory may 

 be considered as a sign of bad husbandry, and it is in 

 this sense that the plant is introduced by Shakespeare. 

 To enforce the idea of the sorrowful plight of King Lear, 

 he is represented by our great poet as 



" Crowned with rank f limit or and furrow weeds, 

 With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, 

 Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 

 In our sustaining corn." 



The fumitory, nuisance as it may be in the garden or the 

 fields, is a particularly easy plant to pull up, as its long, 

 slender root may be drawn out on the most gentle 

 handling. We confess that we have great doubts whether 

 we ourselves are quite the sort of person who ought to have 

 a garden at all, for our gardener's assiduity in weeding out 

 all these wild growths only finds faint echo in our own 

 mind ; and, on the whole, we prefer the fumitory to many 

 of the substitutes for which it is ruthlessly eradicated. 

 We were just in time to rescue the piece we have figured 

 from the pitiless hoe ; and when we carefully .carried it 

 indoors for drawing purposes, the gardener's look was more 

 eloquent than his language probably might have been. 

 He thought we were siding with the enemy, evidently. 



The stems of the fumitory vary in height from .about 

 six inches to eighteen, enlarged at the joints, and spreading 

 a good deal. In some plants the stems stand boldly erect in 

 their own strength, but in others the plant assumes a weak 

 and trailing appearance. The stems are in any case very 

 delicate and fragile-looking. The leaves are arranged 

 alternately on the stem ; they are very much subdivided, 

 the leaflets being ordinarily cut into three conspicuous 

 lobes. This feature may be very well seen in our figure. 



