1 8 Country Rambles. 



mistaken for a small dandelion. It is easily distinguish- 

 able from that despised, but useful plant, by the scales 

 upon its stem, the stalk of the dandelion being perfectly 

 smooth. The leaves and flowers of the dandelion open, 

 moreover, simultaneously. The coltsfoot, like the flower 

 it imitates, holds high repute among the "yarb doctors," 

 who know more of the genuine properties of our native 

 plants than it is common to give them credit for. 



On the banks of the Bollin and its little tributaries 

 grows also that curious plant, the butter-bur. Appearing 

 first as an egg-shaped purple bud, by degrees a beautiful 

 cone or pyramid of lilac blossoms is opened out, bearing 

 no slight resemblance to a hyacinth. Here, again, as 

 happens with many spring flowers, and, strange to say, 

 with two or three autumnal ones, the blossoms are ready 

 before the leaves, which do not attain their full size till 

 after midsummer. Then they hide the river -banks 

 everywhere about Manchester with a thick and deceitful 

 jungle, often lifted on stalks a yard high, and in their 

 vast circumference reminding one of rhubarb leaves. 

 After these earlier visitants come the furze, the purple 

 dead-nettle, and the primrose; and in the hedges, again 

 without leaves, the sloe or black-thorn, its milk-white 

 bloom conspicuous from a long distance. The name 

 /#<;/-thorn, so oddly at variance with the pure white of 

 the flowers, refers to the leaflessness of the plant when in 

 bloom, the o//V<?-thorn, or "May," being at the corre- 

 sponding period covered with verdure. But it must not 

 be imagined that these plants follow just in the order we 



