WATERSIDE WEEDS. 179 



CHAPTER XXX. 

 WATERSIDE WEEDS. 



AT the extreme lower end of the farm, where the three- 

 cornered croft adjoins Smallcombe Barton, our little 

 brooklet Venlake broadens out for fifty yards or so into a 

 shallow cattle-pond, covered on its surface with bright- 

 green fronds of floating duckweed, and bordered at the 

 edge by a lush margin of rank sedges and tall black- 

 crested reed-mace. The vegetation of this valley pool 

 is quite different in type from the sundews and butter- 

 worts of the upland bogs, and yet it is almost equally 

 wild and beautiful in character after its own special 

 fashion. Comparisons, indeed, are never more odious 

 than in the matter of natural scenery. The other day, 

 when I was wandering among the tufted cotton-grasses 

 and pretty orange bog-asphodels of the marshy patch 

 on the common, I said in my haste that there was nothing 

 in England so native and graceful in its beauty as that 

 exquisite flora of the peaty upland ; to-day as I stand 

 by this little pool of Venlake a mere water-logged 

 corner trodden down apparently by the heifers coming 

 constantly to drink where the bank stands lowest I 

 feel as though I must go back upon my own words, and 

 give the first place for gracefulness among English plants 

 to the waterside flags and upright cat's-tails. See, here 



