HERBS 163 



listen to the thrush. Something, however, urges ex- 

 ploration. 



The majority of visitors naturally follow the path, and 

 go round into the general expanse ; but I will turn from 

 here sharply to the right, and crossing the sward there 

 is, after a few steps only, another enclosing wall. Within 

 this enclosure, called the Herbaceous Ground, heedlessly 

 passed and perhaps never heard of by the thousands 

 who go to see the Palm Houses, lies to me the real and 

 truest interest of Kew. For here is a living dictionary 

 of English wild flowers. 



The meadow and the cornfield, the river, the mountain 

 and the woodland, the seashore, the very waste place by 

 the roadside, each has sent its peculiar representatives, 

 and glancing for the moment, at large, over the beds, 

 noting their number and extent, remembering that the 

 specimens are not in the mass but individual, the first con- 

 clusion is that our own country is the true Flowery Land. 



But the immediate value of this wonderful garden is 

 in the clue it gives to the most ignorant, enabling any 

 one, no matter how unlearned, to identify the flower 

 that delighted him or her, it may be, years ago, in far- 

 away field or copse. Walking up and down the green 

 paths between the beds, you are sure to come upon it 

 presently, with its scientific name duly attached and its 

 natural order labelled at the end of the patch. 



Had I only known of this place in former days, how 

 gladly I would have walked the hundred miles hither ! 

 For the old folk, aged men and countrywomen, have for 

 the most part forgotten, if they ever knew, the plants 

 and herbs in the hedges they had frequented from child- 

 hood. Some few, of course, they can tell you ; but the 

 majority are as unknown to them, except by sight, as 

 the ferns of New Zealand or the heaths of the Cape. 



