In My Vicarage Garden 



everyday observation. Where the plants found on 

 railways are the plants of the adjoining woods, fields, 

 and hedgerows, the explanation is very easy. A 

 slight wind or a few birds will soon carry seeds 

 enough to stock a large place ; and in some places 

 the wind or the birds have carried the seeds from 

 gardens more or less near, as must have been the 

 case with the Canterbury Bell on the London, 

 Chatham, and Dover Railway, which I have de- 

 scribed. But this will not explain it all ; and I 

 am sure that the full explanation can be" found in 

 the fact that nature seems, as it were, always on 

 the look-out for places in which plants can find 

 an abiding home. If plants were confined to 

 cultivated spots only, or if they depended on man 

 only for their dispersion and cultivation, there 

 would indeed be more tracts barren and desolate 

 than of well-clothed country ; but, as Sir Thomas 

 Browne said, " the whole earth is the garden of 

 nature, and each fruitful country a paradise," and 

 there are more gardens and paradises planted by 

 nature than by man. And Sir Thomas Browne 

 also noticed how independent of man nature is 

 when he said : 



" The seminal powers of plants lie in great part invisible, 

 while the sun finds polypody in stone walls, the little sting- 

 ing nettle and nightshade in barren, sandy highways, scurvy- 

 grass in Greenland, and unknown plants in earth brought 

 from unknown countries." 



With a slight modification " earth brought from 

 unknown countries " explains the existence of 



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