14 My Garden Summer-Scat. 



carefully dried and ground up, and then infused like 

 coffee, to supply the best medicine for the liver pro- 

 curable. 



Ha ! as I sit here musing, dandelion puts itself en 

 evidence. There come sailing towards me little soft 

 downy parachutes, dappled or patterned with minute 

 pearly stars, that float and waver, though there is no 

 wind that I can perceive. These are the seeds with 

 their tipped wings ready to take hold of any likely 

 bit of soil that will welcome them. How well they 

 illustrate nature's economy, and even fine art, in ways 

 and means, and in adapting means to ends. But by 

 what secret impulse are they moved in this direction, 

 like little fairy ships or balloons steering through the 

 still air ? Of them it cannot surely be said as Coleridge 

 said of his phantom ship in the " Ancient Mariner": 



" The air is cut away before 

 And closes from behind." 



I know not what propels them, only I know that 

 this is a very ancient observation, and that some of 

 the old botanists built a belief or fancy on it a point 

 of weather lore. They said that if the down of the 

 dandelion or thistle flies away when there is no wind, 

 this is a sure sign of rain. I confess I have not been 

 able satisfactorily to verify this, any more than that 

 other assertion of theirs, that the stalks which support 

 the down of the dandelion huddle together in moist 

 weather under their fluffy umbrella, as if they, too, 

 dreaded the effects of a drenching; and yet I fancy 

 I have seen them shrink together a mere fancy 

 perhaps. 



The plantain that outlaw of lawn and border takes 

 root here, and in little open spaces shoots its stalks up 



