Wild Flowers 



change in the air, the feeling, and tone of the place. 

 It is close by, but it is not the same. To discover these 

 minute differences, which make one locality healthy 

 and home happy, and the next adjoining unhealthy, 

 the Chinese have invented the science of Feng-shui, 

 spying about with cabalistic mystery, casting the 

 horoscope of an acre. There is something in all 

 superstitions; they are often the foundation of 

 science. Superstition having made the discovery, 

 science composes a lecture on the reason why, and 

 claims the credit. Bird's-foot lotus means a for- 

 tunate spot, dry, warm so far as soil is concerned. 

 If you were going to live out of doors, you might 

 safely build your kibitka where you found it. Wan- 

 dering with the pictured flower-book, just purchased, 

 over the windy ridge where last year's skeleton leaves, 

 blown out from the alder copse below, came on with 

 grasshopper motion lifted and laid down by the 

 wind, lifted and laid down I sat on the sward of the 

 sheltered slope, and instantly recognised the orange- 

 red claws of the flower beside me. That was the first ; 

 and this very morning, I dread to consider how many 

 years afterwards, I found a plant on a wall which I do 

 not know. I shall have to trace out its genealogy and 

 emblazon its shield. So many years and still only at 

 the beginning the beginning, too, of the beginning 

 for as yet I have not thought of the garden or con- 

 servatory flowers (which are wild flowers somewhere), 

 or of the tropics, or the prairies. 



The great stone of the fallen cromlech, crouching 

 down afar off in the plain behind me, cast its shadow 

 in the sunny morn as it had done, so many summers, 

 for centuries for thousands of years: worn white 

 by the endless sunbeams the ceaseless flood of light 

 the sunbeams of centuries, the impalpable beams 



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