95 



XVII 

 FOES IN THE HAYFIELD. 



THIS week must be marked not with chalk but with 

 charcoal in the Fasti of the farm, for one of our annual 

 plagues has duly recurred in full vigour. The yellow- 

 rattle has got somehow or other into the Three-cornered 

 Croft, and nothing seems to be of any use to get rid of 

 it. As a rule, one ought not to speak evil of plants 

 behind their backs : but for a hungry, persistent, 

 deliberate, designing, importunate parasite, your yellow- 

 rattle has really no fellow. There is not a single redeem- 

 ing point about it : it is ugly, useless, and uninteresting ; 

 and it makes a wretched living by fastening on the roots 

 of grasses and draining them dry with its horrid clinging 

 suckers. See here : if you pull up a tuft of meadow 

 foxtail carefully, you find the rattle actually engaged in 

 sucking its life-blood at this very moment. Rinse the 

 two stocks together in the basin where the brook runs 

 clear from the culvert for a foot or two to make a drink- 

 ing-place for the cattle, and when the soil is washed 

 away you will be able to see the actual mouths by which 

 it fastens itself to the rootlets of its host. The hay in 

 the croft will not be worth much this season : it seldom 

 is ; for rattle dwarfs the grasses terribly, and makes hard, 



