Flowers and their Pedio^rees. 



a very few out of all the facts which go to make up 

 the strange, eventful life-history of this little creeper. 

 If you had but leisure and patience to hear me I 

 might go on to point out many other curious details 

 of organisation which help us to reconstruct the 

 family pedigree of the goose-grass. There is not a 

 single organ in the plant which does not imply whole 

 volumes of unwritten ancestral annals ; and to set 

 them all forth in full would require not a single hour 

 but a whole course of ten or twenty sermons. Still, I 

 hope I have done enough to suggest to you the 

 immense wealth of thought which the goose-grass is 

 capable of calling up in the mind of the evolutionary 

 botanist ; and I trust, when you next get your clothes 

 covered with those horrid little cleavers, you will be 

 disposed to think more tenderly and respectfully 

 than formerly of an ancient and highly developed 

 English weed. 



