196 NETHER LOCHABER. 



nosticator, it is perhaps unequalled by any other British plant, the 

 sensitiveness of its involucral scales to the slightest weather changes 

 "being so extraordinary as to have from very early times attracted 

 the attention and aroused the wonderment of those unacquainted 

 with the fact that similar properties, in a greater or less degree, are 

 common to all plants and flowers -to the whole vegetable kingdom 

 indeed. The carline has a stem of some eight or ten inches in 

 height, and bears many pretty purple flowerets set in the midst of 

 straw-coloured rays. The carline's sensitiveness to weather changes 

 continues long after it has been cut or pulled, provided the heads 

 have not been much hurt or bruised in the process ; on the same 

 principle, we suppose, that some animals are known to manifest 

 unmistakeable signs of muscular irritability long after they are 

 otherwise, as we should say, to all intents and purposes dead. We 

 have generally met with the carline thistle among sickly-growing 

 oats, on poor, thin soil, and sometimes among other luxuriant weeds 

 in a neglected potato field. It is amusing, by the way, sometimes 

 to see bonnet-badges and pictorial representations of what you are 

 supposed to believe is the Scottish thistle, evidently copied to the 

 life from one of the carline family ! which are but pigmies in 

 stature and absolutely harmless in the matter of prickliness com- 

 pared with the grand stately fellow bristling with prickles strong 

 as darning needles, and sharp and venomous as the sting of a bee, 

 with " Nemo me impune lacessit " in the very look of him the true 

 national emblem ! You remember Burns' reference to it in a very- 

 fine stanza that has been often quoted, that indeed everybody has 

 by heart 



" Even then, a wish (I mind its power) 

 A wish that to my latest hour 



Shall strongly heave my breast 

 That I for poor auld Scotland's sake 

 Some usefu' plan or beuk could make, 

 Or sing a sang at least. 



