EUPHORBLE OR SPURGES. 279 



connected with a greater favourite than either, the 

 Woodruff' (Asperula odorata). Several small species of 

 Clover (Trifolium), some of them rare, are scattered 

 about. One of the prettiest of these, though not rare, 

 is T. arvense, or Hare's-foot Clover, a species with erect 

 wiry stems, narrow leaves, and long cylindrical heads of 

 flowers, clothed with soft silky hairs. These may be 

 collected for the winter nosegay, the silky heads re- 

 taining their form and much of their colour in drying. 

 Several wild Geraniums and Stork's-bills (Erodium) 

 abound, the long finely-cut leaves of the latter being 

 more beautiful than the comparatively insignificant 

 flowers. The more bare patches of sand are frequently 

 diversified with scattered tufts of a half-shrubby Spurge 

 (Euphorbia paralias), one or two feet high, with erect 

 stems, clothed with closely-set, oblong, somewhat fleshy 

 leaves, and bearing an umbel of greenish-yellow flowers. 

 Like all the Spurges, it contains abundance of an acrid 

 milky juice, which flows when any part of the stem or 

 leaf is wounded. Most of the Spurges grow in similarly 

 dry ground, in various parts of the world, and perhaps 

 nowhere are they found of larger size or of stranger forms 

 than in the burning sands of Africa. There the smooth 

 stem, clothed with thin leaves, which marks our British 

 kinds, is exchanged for a succulent stem, often destitute 

 of leaves altogether, or having those organs converted 

 into spines, or into lumpy bodies. The stem of some is 

 columnar, rising into trees twenty to forty feet high, 

 and bearing great naked branches like arms of gigantic 

 candelabra ; that of others is globose, or melon-shaped, 

 armed with spiny ribs and furrows ; and others again 



