38 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



case we may very possibly be asked how we came to admit 

 it to a place in our series while other plants, concerning 

 which there can be no doubt, find no room. To this 

 appeal we can, we think, make full and complete reply. 

 The plant we figure is so abundantly met with on sandy 

 and stormy sea-shores that our series would have been 

 manifestly incomplete without it, and whether it be only 

 a sea-side modification of the common bladder campion 

 or an entirely different plant, its appearance at least is so 

 different as to call for a separate illustration. As the sea- 

 side flora, too, is comparatively so small, we are glad to 

 avail ourselves of any additional example of it. 



The sea campion grows in clumps on the most un- 

 promising-looking situations, where the wild winds rush 

 tumultuously over the waste, while the beach on which 

 we find it may be either sand or the less-promising surface 

 of rounded boulders, that render walking so difficult, and 

 that present a stony surface that one would imagine utterly 

 repellant to any of the children of Flora. 



" The Eryngo here 



Sits as a queen among the scanty tribes 

 Of vegetable race. .... 

 Here the sweet rose would die ; but she imbibes 

 From arid sand and salt sea dewdrops strength : 

 The native of the beach, by nature formed 

 To dwell amongst the ruder elements." 



The plant referred to in these lines of Drummond, one 

 of our little-read poets, is the interesting sea-holly, or 

 Eryngium maritimum. Its dense heads of small blue 

 flowers, the quaint spiny forms of its foliage, and the singu- 

 lar purple bloom over leaves and stems, combine to make 

 it a very curious plant. When gathered it loses much of 



