BEITISH AND FOREIGN 129 



straying, even at the present day, far from the precincts of 

 farmyards and villages. The shepherd's-purse and many 

 other common garden weeds of cultivation are of Eastern 

 origin, and came to us at first with the seed-corn and the 

 peas from the Mediterranean region. Corn-cockles and 

 corn-flowers are equally foreign and equally artificial ; even 

 the scarlet poppy, seldom found except in wheat-fields or 

 around waste places in villages, has probably followed the 

 course of tillage from some remote and ancient Eastern 

 origin. There is a pretty blue veronica which was unknown 

 in England some thirty years since, but which then began 

 to spread in gardens, and is now one of the commonest and 

 most troublesome weeds throughout the whole country. 

 Other familiar wild plants have first been brought over as 

 garden flowers. There is the wall-flower, for instance, now 

 escaped from cultivation in every part of Britain, and mant- 

 ling with its yellow bunches both old churches and houses 

 and also the crannies of the limestone cliffs around half 

 the shores of England. The common stock has similarly 

 overrun the sea-front of the Isle of Wight ; the monkey- 

 plant, originally a Chilian flower, has run wild in many 

 boggy spots in England and Wales ; and a North American 

 balsam, seldom cultivated even in cottage gardens, has 

 managed to establish itself in profuse abundance along the 

 banks of the Wey about Guildford and Godalming. One 

 little garden linaria, at first employed as an ornament for 

 hanging-baskets, has become so common on old walls and 

 banks as to be now considered a mere weed, and extermi- 

 nated accordingly by fashionable gardeners. Such are the 

 unaccountable reverses of fortune, that one age will pay 

 fifty guineas a bulb for a plant which the next age grubs 

 up unanimously as a vulgar intruder. White of Selborne 

 noticed with delight in his own kitchen that rare insect, 

 the Oriental cockroach, lately imported ; and Mr. Brewer 



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