THISTLES 97 



of houses. It has no special habitat, no division of 

 the land which owns it and gives it a name. It 

 belongs not to the hills, nor to the woods, nor to 

 the marshes, nor to the coast. It has possession of 

 all sorts of recent heaps, and may at no distant 

 date have been introduced. Very probably it is 

 not our native thistle, in the ordinary sense 

 of having been longest in possession. The 

 marsh thistle leads a wilder and more inde- 

 pendent life. 



But common sense has something more to say 

 than that. The man who first gave the plant 

 its national significance may not have made 

 such fine distinctions ; probably he did not. Each 

 prickly thing may have been to him a thistle, 

 and all thistles alike. Botanists, besides being 

 scarce, are not disposed to symbol-making, but 

 rather to species-making. With all their virtues 

 they lack imagination ; and who knows how many 

 species have been made since Scotland first uttered 

 her prickly motto ? 



The inventor may even have called this a 

 land of thistles, in tones of contempt. To 

 whom some perfervid patriot, in a moment 

 of forgetfulness, may have sharply rejoined, 

 " Hands off, then ! " Some probability is lent 

 7 



