THE DANDELION. 75 



this flower, the contrast of its colors, and simplicity of 

 attitude which it displays when springing from out its 

 grassy tuft, can hardly be surpassed by any from another 

 region. By its side peeps out the brigjit gleeful blue 

 eyes of the little germander speedwell, in joyful gaiety 

 a lowly domestic plant that loves and seeks alliance 

 with its kind, and in small family associations, by united 

 splendor, decorates the foliage around. And there we 

 find the stitch-wort, mingling her snowy bloom immac- 

 ulately pure, with pallid green : too delicate to vegetate 

 alone, it seeks the shelter of the hedge or copse, trem- 

 bles when the breeze goes by r and seems an emblem 

 of innocence and grace. And there the bright-flowered 

 lotus with its pea-like bloom, in social union glows as 

 burnished gold, animating and gilding with its lustre 

 all the tribes that spring near it ; and fifty others, too, 

 we note, which, though common and disregarded by 

 reason of our familiarity with them, or expelled from 

 favor by the novelty of far-fetched fair ones, deserve 

 more attention than we are disposed to afford them. 

 There are few plants which we look upon with more 

 perfect contempt than that common product of every 

 soil, the ' dandelion.' Every child knows it, and the 

 little village groups which perambulate the hedges for 

 the first offspring of the year, amuse themselves by 

 hanging circlets of its stalks linked like a chain round 

 their necks : yet if we examine this in all the stages of 

 its growth, we shall pronounce it a beautiful production; 

 and its blossom, though often a solitary one, is perhaps 

 the very first that enlivens the sunny bank of the hedge 

 in the opening year, peeping out from withered leaves, 

 dry stalks, and desolation, as a herald, telling us that 

 nature is not dead, but reposing, and will awaken to life 

 again. And some of us, perhaps, can remember the 

 pleasure it afforded us in early days, when we first 

 noticed its golden blossoms under the southern shelter 

 of the cottage hedge, thinking that, the * winter was 

 past,' and that ' the time of the singing of birds was 

 come;' and yet, possibly, when seen, it may renew 

 some of that childish delight, though the fervor of ex- 

 pectation is cooled by experience and time. The form 



