166 WILD FLOWEES. 



the field, of wheat, or rye, of oats, or harley, as 

 well as the maize and millet-crops of other 

 lands, attest, wherever they are fomid, that man 

 has been tliere, not as the roving Arab or the 

 restless Indian, but as the tiller of the soil and 

 the settled inhabitant of the country. The 

 corn-plants are termed the cereal grasses ; and 

 that species by which the people of the land is 

 mainly supported is called pre-eminently corn. 

 The -most showy flower of the corn-field, in 

 this month, is the wild marigold, {Chnjsan- 

 themum segetum.) The old writers, and even 

 our earhest British poet, Chaucer, knew it by 

 the name of gold ; and it is still called goules, 

 orgoulans, in some counties of England. It is 

 quite as large, or even larger, than the garden 

 marigold ; which flower also grows wild in the 

 corn-fields of Southern Europe, and is called by 

 the Italians, the flower of every month. The 

 corn marigold blossoms as early as July, and it 

 bears the cold of winter better than many of 

 our flowers ; for if the autumnal and winter 

 seasons are not very severe, it may be found 

 bright and blooming as late as December, and 



" Cheering through the shortening day 

 Is autumn with her weeds of yellow." 



This flower is rather local in its haunts ; it is 

 by no means common in Kent, though abund- 

 ant in some of the neighbouring counties. In 

 the corn-fields, within a few miles of Paris, it 

 grows so profusely, that the land is as gay with 

 its golden flowers as our fields are with the 

 charlock, or our sprmg meads with the butter- 



