246 LETTERS TO MARCO xxxvi 



on natural history for boys, who, for instance, 

 in describing the ways of a frog, playfully 

 call it " froggy," whilst a mole is "the little 

 gentleman in black." 



There are, however, some first-rate popular 

 works on flowers and botany : Mr. Robinson's 

 English Flower Garden, and the Rev. C. T. 

 John's Flowers of the Fieldbemg very notable 

 examples ; but even in the last-named work 

 space necessarily prevents the introduction of 

 much about the plants which one would like 

 to know. The descriptions of the plants, 

 though correct enough, are not nearly so 

 graphic and interesting as those to be found 

 in Gerard or Parkinson, written nearly three 

 hundred years before. Take, for example, 

 the description of the fig-wort. In the 

 modern work : 



Scrophularia nodosa (Knotted Fig-wort). Stem square, 

 with angles blunt ; leaves smooth, heart-shaped, tapering to 

 a point ; flowers in loose panicles. Moist bushy places ; 

 common. A tall herbaceous plant, 3-4 feet high, with 

 repeatedly forked panicles of almost globular dingy purple 

 flowers, but attractive neither in form nor colour. Fl. June, 



