THE DANDELION. 101 



the fervour of expectation is cooled by experience 

 and time. The form 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 bouyant power to the bur- 

 den 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 appoint- 

 ment ! but so common an event as hardly to be 

 noticed by us ; yet it accomplishes effectually the 

 designs of nature, and plants the species at dis- 

 tances 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 purport 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 pharmacopoeias, 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, 



