390 WILD FLOWERS. 



" By a prophetic poppy-leaf I found 

 Your changed affection, for it gave no sound 

 Tho' in my hand struck hollow as it lay, 

 But quickly withered, like your love, away ;" 



and the same employment of the flower still pre- 

 vails in the more rustic districts of our own land. 

 In some parts little children fear to gather the 

 flower lest its very fragile petals should fall in the 

 act of plucking it, thus, as it is believed, rendering 

 the gatherer more susceptible of the dangerous ef- 

 fects of lightning ; on which account, as the veteran 

 naturalist of Berwickshire informs us, it is called on 

 the Border "thunder-flower/" or "lightnings/" 



The same author notices the remarkable manner 

 in which the poppy disappears when ploughed land 

 is laid down in grass, again to appear when the soil 

 is turned up anew ; remarking on an example of 

 this observed in the railway cuttings* between Ber- 

 wick and Cockburn's path, and also between Tweed- 

 mouth and Kelso, which were speedily covered with 

 the plant, especially in those gravel knolls which 

 are supposed to have been deposited in the glacial 

 epoch. " Nor need we/' he observes, " be hindered 

 from entertaining the belief that the poppy was 

 amongst the first plants that occupied the naked 

 surface of those knolls, burying therein the seeds 

 of primeval crops to be preserved intact until acci- 

 dent shall bring them up, and within the influences 

 of vivifying agents."-)- 



* These railway cuttings furnish considerations which bota- 

 nists would do well to study; their earliest vegetation having 

 frequently a very distinctive character. 



t See "Botany of the Eastern Borders." 



