24 A GARDEN DIARY 



indeed it has been ascertained that were it thus 

 neatly tucked and tidied away, the level of the 

 ocean would be only altered by less than a 

 hundred feet. It is due mainly to the untiring 

 vigour, to the extraordinary binding power of 

 plants, that this consummation has been averted. 

 Their office has been to hinder a tendency which, 

 even if it had not ended in the submergence of 

 the whole earth, would at least have washed and 

 pared away its irregularities to one deadly 

 monotonous level. Trees and bushes do much 

 in this direction, but it is the little clinging 

 weeds, which as gardeners we detest, and would 

 so gladly annihilate : these crowfoots why not, 

 by the way, crowfeet ? with their crowding 

 roots ; these knotgrasses, these clinging bind- 

 weeds, it is such as they, backed by sea-spurreys, 

 and bents, and by reeds and rushes innumerable, 

 that do more to keep the waters of the globe in 

 order, and to maintain dry land, than man, with 

 all his dykes, dams, embankments, and such like 

 accumulations, since first he began to strut or to 

 caper over its surface. 



But the journey which lies before one's thoughts 

 when once they embark upon this river we call 

 " Life," is indeed too big for them even imagina- 

 tively to attempt. Our boats are so small, and 

 the river so wide, that one soon loses sight of 

 shore. Even if, abandoning these perplexing 

 living things, one falls back upon the mere in- 



