104 THE DANDELION. 



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 pa- 

 rent plant, but this was not the purport of nature ; 

 yet may seem to some a very unnecessary con- 

 trivance for the propagation of a common dande- 

 lion, whose benefits to mankind as a medicine, 

 though retained in our pharmacopoeias, and occa- 

 sionally 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 circum- 

 stance should abate our pride, our assumed pre- 

 tensions 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 neighbourhood, I am induced to 

 give them a place with our notables, because I be- 

 lieve that they have not been noticed, and afford a 

 strong example of the persevering endeavours that 

 plants exert at times to maintain existence. Plate 

 2. represents the tufted head and entire roots of 

 a grass, gathered from a down fed by sheep from 



