HERBS 167 



weeds removed from around them, and all the grasses 

 of the field cultivated as affectionately as the finest rose. 

 There is something cool and pleasant in this green after 

 the colours of the herbs in flower, though each grass is 

 but a bunch, yet it has with it something of the sweet- 

 ness of the meadows by the brooks. Juncus, the rush, 

 is here, a sign often welcome to cattle, for they know 

 that water must be near; the bunch is cut down, and 

 the white pith shows, but it will speedily be up again; 

 horse-tails, too, so thick in marshy places one small 

 species is abundant in the ploughed fields of Surrey, 

 and must be a great trouble to the farmers, for the land 

 is sometimes quite hidden by it. 



In the adjoining water tank are the principal flowers 

 and plants which flourish in brook, river, and pond. 

 This yellow iris flowers in many streams about London, 

 and the water-parsnip's pale green foliage waves at the 

 very bottom, for it will grow with the current right over 

 it as well as at the side. Water-plantain grows in every 

 pond near the metropolis; there is some just outside 

 these gardens, in a wet ha-ha. 



The huge water-docks in the centre here flourish at 

 the verge of the adjacent Thames ; the marsh marigold, 

 now in seed, blooms in April in the damp furrows of 

 meadows close up to town. But in this flower-pot, sunk 

 so as to be in the water, and yet so that the rim may 

 prevent it from spreading and coating the entire tank 

 with green, is the strangest of all, actually duckweed. 

 The still ponds always found close to cattle yards, are 

 in summer green from end to end with this weed. I 

 recommend all country folk who come up to town in 

 summer time to run down here just to see duckweed 

 cultivated once in their lives. 



In front of an ivy-grown museum there is a kind of 



