120 PROSERPINA. 



it never seems to have occurred to Aunt Judy that 

 some plants never do ! 



Who ever saw a wood anemone or a heath 

 blossom in the wrong place ? Who ever saw nettle 

 or hemlock in a right one ? And yet, the difference 

 between flower and weed, (I use, for convenience' 

 sake, these words in their familiar opposition,) 

 certainly does not consist merely in the flowers 

 being innocent, and the weed stinging and venomous. 

 We do not call the nightshade a weed in our hedges, 

 nor the scarlet agaric in our woods. But we do 

 the corncockle in our fields. 



4. Had the thoughtful little tutress gone but one 

 thought farther, and instead of " a vegetable in a 

 wrong place," (which it may happen to the inno- 

 centest vegetable sometimes to be, without turning 

 into a weed, therefore,) said, " A vegetable which 

 has an innate disposition to get into the wrong 

 place," she would have greatly furthered the matter 

 for us ; but then she perhaps would have felt 

 herself to be uncharitably dividing with vegetables 

 her own little evangelical property of original sin. 



5. This, you will find, nevertheless, to be the very 

 essence of weed character — in plants, as in men. If 

 you glance through your botanical books, you will 

 see often added after certain names — ' a troublesome 

 weed.' It is not its being venomous, or ugly, but 



