76 THE DANDELION. 



of this flower, with its ligulate petals many times doubled 

 is elegant and perfect ; the brightness and liveliness of 

 the yellow, like the warm rays of an evening sun, are 

 not exceeded in any blossom, native or foreign, that I 

 know of; and this, having faded away, is succeeded by 

 a head of down, which loosened from its receptacle, and 

 floating in the breeze, comes sailing calmly along before 

 us, freighted with a seed at its base ; but so accurately 

 adjusted is its buoyant power to the burden it bears, 

 that steadily passing on its way, it rests at last in some 

 cleft or cranny in the earth, preparatory to its period 

 of germination, appearing more like a flight of animated 

 creatures than the seed of a plant. This is a very 

 beautiful appointment ! but so common an event as 

 hardly to be noticed by us ; yet it accomplishes ef- 

 fectually the designs of nature, and plants the species 

 at distances and in places that no other contrivance 

 could so easily and fitly effect. The seeds, it is true, 

 might have fallen and germinated around the parent 

 plant, but this was not the purpose of nature ; yet may 

 seem to some a very unnecessary contrivance for the 

 propagation of a common dandelion, whose benefits to 

 mankind as a medicine, though retained in our phar- 

 macopoeias, and occasionally resorted to, seem of no 

 great importance. Nor are we sensible that its virtues 

 are essential to any portion of the creation ; but this 

 very circumstance should abate our pride, our assumed 

 pretensions of knowledge, as we may be assured that 

 its existence, though hidden from us, is required in the 

 great scheme of nature, or such elaborate and sufficient 

 contrivances for its continuation and increase would 

 never have been called into action by Nature, who is so 

 remarkably simple in all her actions, economical in her 

 ways, and frugal of her means. 



Some very extraordinary vegetable productions are 

 now on the table before me. Though not gathered in 

 this neighborhood, I am induced to give them a place 

 with our notables, because I believe that they have not 

 been noticed, and afford a strong example of the per- 

 severing endeavors that plants exert at times to main- 

 tain existence. One of these is the tufted head and 



