172 WATSIDB WEEDS. 



shaped leaves. Then into the same section come 

 crowding a large following of pond-'weeds ; you 

 know these plants with dark olive-green leaves, 

 floating on most pond Surfaces, from which the 

 little flower spikes shoot up in early summer ; and 

 lastly, there is the duckweed of our stagnant waters, 

 which all summer long covers and protects them 

 with its briUiant green fronds, till the ice covering 

 surprises and supersedes it. If we have not already 



Fia. 103.— BloSBom of Wood-rash, showing perianth in six dlTisions, and 

 style with three stigmas. 



filled your hands too fuU, make way for a few glu- 

 macese. If you can recognize a sedge or two, get 

 them, and any grass, from oats to meadow grass, 

 which you can find in blossom, will do well to illus- 

 trate what we wish to say. You look distrustfully 

 at your handful, the members of it seem so different 

 from the plants you have been all along examining, 

 Let us see ? Do not forget the triue numbers of 

 the straight-veined division, and go back to your 

 rushes. Take a wood-rush blossom (Fig. 103), and 



