2^6 Floivers and their Pedigrees, 



VIII. 

 CUCKOO-PINT} 



Close by the hedge-side there runs a little streamlet 

 known to the village children for two miles around by 

 the strangely pleonastic title of the Bourne Brook. 

 Pleonastic, I say, because bourne is, of course, good 

 old English for what in modern English we call a 

 brook, so that the two halves of the common name 

 are, in fact, synonymous, the later word being added 

 to the earlier by the same sort of unconscious redupli- 

 cation as that which gives us the double forms of 

 Windermere Lake or Mount Ben Jerlaw. I can't tell 

 you, though, what a world of life and interest is to 

 be found among the low cliff banks and tiny shingle 

 patches that bound the Bourne Brook. In the stream 

 itself there are darting crayfish, which we can catch 

 with our fingers by lifting up the green slimy stones ; 

 there are caddis-worms, and big pond snails, and pout- 

 ing miller's thumbs, and iridescent stickleback ; it is 

 even rumoured, though I doubt whether on sufficient 



' A lecture delivered at the Midland Institute, Birmingham. 



