24 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



Though we have been so many thousand years upon 

 the earth we do not seem to have done any more as yet 

 than walk along beaten footpaths, and sometimes really 

 it would seem as if there were something in the minds of 

 many men quite artificial, quite distinct from the sun 

 and trees and hills — altogether house people, whose 

 gods must be set in four-cornered buildings. There is 

 nothing in books that touches my dandelion. 



It grows, ah yes, it grows ! How does it grow ? 

 Builds itself up somehow of sugar and starch, and turns 

 mud into bright colour and dead earth into food for 

 bees, and some day perhaps for you, and knows when to 

 shut its petals, and how to construct the brown seeds to 

 float with the wind, and how to please the children, and 

 how to puzzle me. Ingenious dandelion ! If you find 

 out that its correct botanical name is Leontodon tarax- 

 acum, or Leontodon dens-leonis, that will bring it into 

 botany ; and there is a place called Dandelion Castle in 

 Kent, and a bell with the inscription — 



John de Dandelion with his great dog 

 Brought over this bell on a mill cog — 



which is about as relevant as the mere words Leontodon 

 taraxacum. Botany is the knowledge of plants according 

 to the accepted definition ; naturally, therefore, when I 

 began to think I would like to know a little more of 

 flowers than could be learned by seeing them in the 

 fields, I went to botany. Nothing could be more 

 simple. You buy a book which first of all tells you how 

 to recognise them, how to classify them ; next instructs 

 you in their uses, medical or economical ; next tells you 

 about the folk-lore and curious associations ; next enters 

 into a lucid explanation of the physiology of the plant 

 and its relation to other creatures ; and finally, and 



