RAILWAY FLOWERS 189 



I have found by a railway station is a dwarf toad-flax ; 

 and, curiously, the common yellow toad-flax or snap 

 dragon has colonised a very steep and unusually barren 

 bank in a neighbour cutting. On the same stretch of 

 railway I have known the seed-dust and wings of the 

 sallow to pour into the carriage in quantity sufficient to 

 astonish passengers, and though not by itself a cause of 

 growth, its multitude gives evidence how far and fast a 

 true and fertile seed might be distributed. The winged 

 seeds, of course, need no railway. The lovely rosebay 

 willow-herb, which to-day makes a glory of every other 

 waste space in England, as it colonises, under the name 

 of fire-weed, the burnt forests of Canada, is so light and 

 so obedient to the gentlest zephyr that it would travel 

 for miles in the very doldrums. It is the heavier seed, 

 such as the hogweed s a plant singularly congenial to 

 railside and roadside that prefers the draught of the 

 express to the strongest gale of heaven. 



The treatment of railway banks, as ordained by au 

 thority, is often grim ; and perhaps unnecessary. The 

 grasses and moon-daisies are mowed and the swathe 

 ruthlessly burnt where it lies. Much of Bottom s &quot; good 

 hay, sweet hay &quot; that hath no fellow is destroyed and un- 

 loveliness follows. But this yearly mowing has a com 

 pensating influence that the less botanical of our rural 

 authorities might well mark and digest. You will have 

 some ado to find a single thistle or nettle on the railway 

 bank, for neither of these weeds is a hydra, or, at any rate, 

 a persistent hydra. If you go on cutting its head off and 

 lowering the trunk it perishes out of the earth. I am 

 familiar with one bank where this frequent shearing has 

 completely changed the habit of a lovely shrub. The 

 broom that grows there now flowers profusely as of old, 

 but as near the soil as a dandelion ; and its creeping 



