1 88 JULY 



Euston to Northampton and far beyond, especially 

 towards the base of the cutting. The plant has a fondness 

 for all sorts of bank that is not easily explained. I once 

 saw a clay cliff tumble into a garden at Rye, and within a 

 year the whole yellow green mass of unlovely earth was 

 completely covered with coltsfoot. Its leaves were only 

 less big than the burdock s, which also delights in railway 

 banks, especially in the West. 



Now the railway is a potent distributor of seed. Watch 

 any express go by. For what a long while bits of dust 

 and paper go whirling restlessly in its wake, like a pack 

 of dogs in vain pursuit of a bird. The &quot; bobbery pack,&quot; 

 as they say in India, travels farthest and fastest along the 

 cuttings ; and among them at the due season of the year, 

 are innumerable seeds, distributed in a manner described 

 in detail by both Shelley and Darwin, who between them 

 supremely transmuted science into poetry and poetry into 

 science. Now and again the passage of a particular sort 

 of plant has been traced along a particular railway. One 

 rare species was tracked down the whole of its course 

 from Oxford to Winchester. Its seeds had skedaddled 

 with the rubbish in the rear of the trains, sowing them 

 selves when after each gust they escaped from the track 

 on the banks of the cuttings. Many years ago I walked 

 for some ten miles along a single track railway in New 

 foundland, and was seldom out of sight of English 

 grasses. They had sprung from the seed of imported 

 hay deposited the year before at Grand Falls Station and 

 carried forward, so to say, free on rail. 



Some sorts of seeds appear to follow and enjoy this 

 form of transportation almost exclusively, perhaps in 

 reality because they happen to be suited by the gritty soil 

 that only the railway supplies. Whether it is an accident 

 or not, I do not know, but the one plant, else alien, that 



