XXX. 



WATERSIDE WEEDS. 



AT the extreme lower end of the farm, where the 

 three-cornered croft adjoins Smallcombe Barton, our little 

 brooklet Yenlake broadens out for fifty yards or so into 

 a shallow cattle-pond, covered on its surface with bright 

 green fronds of floating duckweed, and bordered at the 

 edge by a lush margin of rank sedges and tall black- 

 crested reed-mace. The vegetation of this valley pool is 

 quite different in type from the sundews and butterworts 

 of the upland bogs, and yet it is almost equally wild and 

 beautiful in character after its own special fashion. 

 Comparisons, indeed, are never more odious than in the 

 matter of natural scenery. The other day, when I was 

 wandering among the tufted cotton-grasses and pretty 

 orange bog-asphodels of the marshy patch on the com- 

 mon, I said in my haste that there was nothing in Eng- 

 land so native and graceful in its beauty as that exquisite 

 flora of the peaty upland ; to-day as I stand by this little 

 pool of Yenlake a mere water-logged corner trodden 

 down apparently by the heifers coming constantly to 

 drink where the bank stands lowest I feel as though I 

 must go back upon my own words, and give the first 

 place for gracefulness among English plants to the water- 

 side flags and upright cat's-tails. See, here by the little 

 rapids where the beck tumbles by miniature cascades 

 into the pond, the aromatic sweet-gale grows in un- 

 wonted profusion ; smallest of our native catkin -bearing 

 trees (except the dwarf creeping willows), it loves the 



