242 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



improve the quality. Our most productive black- 

 berries are large and beautiful, but they are inferior 

 in flavour when compared with the wild ones found 

 along the fence-rows of back pasture lots.' I have 

 never succeeded in getting fine fruit on them, and the 

 few I do get are always taken by the birds before they 

 are fully ripe. And so I must leave the brambles, but 

 not before I have quoted two stanzas from Eben. 

 Elliott's pretty poem on the wild bramble : — 



' Though woodbines flaunt, and roses grow 

 O'er all the fragrant bowers ; 

 Thou needst not be ashamed to show 

 Thy satin-threaded flowers — 



For dull the eye, the heart is dull, 



That cannot feel how fair 

 Amid all beauty, beautiful. 



Thy tender blossoms are. ' 



I have left myself too small a space to speak of 

 thistles as I should wish, for I think them as well 

 Avorthy of admiration and cultivation as the brambles ; 

 and I mean by thistles all those members of the com- 

 posite family which, though divided into many genera, 

 have a common resemblance as having prickly stems, 

 leaves, or flowers, with the flowers arranged in a more 

 or less globular shape, and the sea-hollies and the 

 teazel, which, though of different families, may well 

 be ranged for our purpose in the same ranks. Of the 



