THE HAREBELL. 



grow and prepare for flowering ; it has 

 to pass through its adolescence and its 

 formative epoch. Now, the harebell is a 

 herb whose two ages of life are singu- 

 larly different ; if you saw it in its green 

 youth, when it is devoting itself wholly to 

 feeding and storage, you would never 

 imagine it was the selfsame plant as that 

 whose tall and very slender stem supports 

 in later life the scattered group of droop- 

 ing blue bell-flowers with which you are 

 familiar. 



Here on the dry sandbank, beside the 

 path that runs obliquely across the rnoor, 

 I see half a dozen harebell-worts in the 

 first, or caterpillar, stage of their existence. 

 The metaphor is less violent by far than 

 you would at first imagine, for in its earlier 

 days the harebell, like the caterpillar, does 

 nothing but eat and lay by for the future ; 

 while in its second or flowering stage it 

 does nothing but put forth its tender blue 

 blossoms, which answer to the butterfly 



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