THE HARMAS 7 



stride a little. As these plants, especially the first two, 

 might be of use to me by offering the Bees and Wasps a 

 spoil to forage, I am compelled to reinstate them in the 

 ground whence they were driven by the fork. 



What abounds without my mediation is the invaders 

 of any soil that is first dug up and then left for a long 

 time to its own resources. We have, in the first rank, 

 the couch-grass, that execrable weed which three years 

 of stubborn warfare have not succeeded in exterminating. 

 Next, in respect of number, come the centauries, grim- 

 looking one and all, bristling with prickles or starry hal- 

 berds. They are the yellow-flowered centaury, the moun- 

 tain centaury, the star-thistle and the rough centaury : the 

 first predominates. Here and there, amid their inextri- 

 cable confusion, stands, like a chandelier with spreading 

 orange flowers for lights, the fierce Spanish oyster-plant, 

 whose spikes are strong as nails. Above it towers the 

 Illyrian cotton-thistle, whose straight and solitary stalk 

 soars to a height of three to six feet and ends in large 

 pink tufts. Its armor hardly yields before that of the 

 oyster-plant. Nor must we forget the lesser thistle-tribe, 

 with, first of all, the prickly or " cruel " thistle, which is 

 so well armed that the plant-collector knows not where to 

 grasp it; next, the spear-thistle, with its ample foliage, 

 ending each of its veins with a spear-head; lastly, the 

 black knap-weed, which gathers itself into a spiky knot. 

 In among these, in long lines armed with hooks, the 

 shoots of the blue dewberry creep along the ground. To 

 visit the prickly thicket when the Wasp goes foraging, 

 you must wear boots that come to mid-leg or else resign 



