46 THE BROOK BOOK 



mine because I know its ways, its inhabitants and 

 have a speaking acquaintance with the families of 

 plants which dip their feet in its waters or dwell 

 unmolested in the fence rows under which it 

 creeps. What watercresses have I gathered there, 

 what mint, what marsh marigolds more golden 

 than the butter made by the high born cows! 



The meadow itself yields me great joy, for a 

 fear of cows was fortunately omitted when my 

 budget of undesirable characteristics was allotted 

 to me. In winter when the first light snow has 

 covered the closely cropped grass, sentinel mulleins 

 and teasels stand firm and stark. Well I know 

 that at their feet are the young plants from which 

 new flowering stalks will rise to replace the veterans 

 when the season of growing things returns. Have 

 I not felt the soft flannel of the young mullein 

 leaf and admired, without handling, the prickly 

 rosettes of the teasel? Some of the mulleins are 

 like great index fingers pointing heavenward with 

 short thumbs on one side ; others are like branched 

 candlesticks. 



"Have you noticed that mullein stalks stand 

 always in rows?" inquired the budding scientist. 

 "Strange fact, isn't it, as regularly as if they had 

 been planted out so — in rows, two in a row!" 



One certainly does get that impression in look- 

 ing across a field punctuated with scattered mullein 

 stalks, especially in winter, when they stand out 

 black against the snow. Fix the eye on one near 

 at hand and a second lines up with the first, "two 

 in a row." A meadow in winter would be a dreary 



