140 WILD FLOWERS. 



This flower is a great favourite with German 

 ladies, and they frequently wear it in their hair ; 

 it lb the companion of the ripening and ripened 

 corn in all the countries of Europe. 



The several kinds of scabious are also 

 pretty and common flowers now ; the field 

 scabious, {Scabiosa arveiisis,) termed by botan- 

 ists, field knautia, is very frequent on dry fields, 

 and has large convex heads of flowers, of a 

 beautiful purplish lilac ; these floAvers, if held 

 in the snioke of tobacco, become of a delicate 

 green colour. 



The devil's bit scabious (Scabiosa succisa) 

 grows in meadow lands, and is remarkable for 

 its abrupt root, which seems as if bitten off; 

 the fact is, that the top of the root actually 

 dies awav, and then a horizontal root is formed ; 

 but as no philosophy has yet accounted for the 

 singular fact of this decay, we need not be sur- 

 prised that, in olden times, it was believed that 

 the great enemy of mankind bit it off in " cnvie 

 because it had so many excellent vertues." 

 "Unhappily," says Sir J.E.Smith, "this malice 

 has been so successful, that no virtues can be now 

 found in the remainder of the root or herb." 



The blue succory, sometimes called chicory, 

 or blue endive, (^Cichorium Iiitybus,) grows 

 alike in corn-fields and hedges, not only in 

 England, but very generally on the continent. 

 The Germans had an old name for it, which 

 signified "keeper of the ways." It has large 

 flowers, the size of half-a-crown, pale blue, and 

 composed of rays, so as that it may truly be 



