The Wood Anemone. 109 



lady to whom we owe everything, laughs alike at ourselves 

 and our nomenclature. We call the flower nemorosa, 

 conclude that all is settled, and straightway, as in that 

 sweet and still forenoon in the Reddish valley (1840), 

 she flings it by handfuls over the sward, and leaves the 

 grove as she then left the Arden woods, without a blossom 

 and without a leaf. Similar curious departure from the 

 accustomed habitat of the wood anemone has since been 

 observed at Cheadle and at Alderley. 



No slight pleasure is it in connection with botany that 

 plants and events thus link themselves together, recalling 

 whole days of tranquil happiness spent with valued friends 

 in the green fields. Associations with trees and flowers 

 seem almost inevitably pleasant and graceful ones; at all 

 events, we never hear of the reverse. When orators and 

 poets want objects for elegant simile and comparison, 

 they find trees and flowers supply them most readily; and, 

 on the other hand, how rarely are these beautiful produc- 

 tions of nature used for the illustration of what is vicious 

 and degrading, or in any way mixed up with what is vile 

 and disgraceful. Trees and flowers lead us, by virtue of their 

 kindly influences on the heart and the imagination, to a 

 disrelish and forgetfulness of the uncomely, and to think 

 better of everything around us; so that a walk in the 

 fields, over and above its invigorating and refreshing value, 

 acts as a kindly little preacher, and shows us that we may 

 at all events read, if not 



Honi soit qui mat y pense, write, 



In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white. 



