184 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



or unfriendlinesses of any kind. The toothed, pointed 

 leaves are smooth, of a very dark grey, clothed with white 

 tomentum on the reverse. The stems, almost bare, are 

 tall and few-flowered, also grey with down. The big 

 flufty blossoms are of purplish rose, and dowered with 

 a faint, intoxicating scent, which I earned a prophetic re- 

 putation for eccentricity by loving even in the remote days 

 of my childhood. In one form of Carduus heteropht/Uus, 

 too, the leaves are gashed and slashed into so handsome 

 a pattern that they come to recall the convention of the 

 Acanthus. Actuated, then, by admiration and old love, 

 I introduced the Melancholy Thistle from the woods 

 above the Lake to the bog in the Old Garden. Immedi- 

 ately, however, the drooping creature cheered up in the 

 most dreadful and depressing way. It grew and it grew 

 and it grew, it spread and it spread and it spread ; ever 

 since I have been waging vain war with the invader, 

 spudding it up to-day in one place only to find it burgeon- 

 ing anew from another to-morrow. My combat is with 

 a Lernean Hydra ; the plant runs underground, and 

 makes two shoots, it seems to me, for each one that I 

 cut off. But still I love the Melancholy Thistle, wicked, 

 fascinating creature, which is not content with the ini- 

 quity of ramping insatiably underground, but must needs 

 also fill the air, all summer through, with flying silver 

 clouds of seed. Just such a wickedness characterises, 

 too, as I have said, those other wicked applicants for 

 admission to our gardens, Epilobium angusttfolium and 

 Epilobium hirsutum. Yet though their guilt is no worse 

 than the Thistle's, I frankly detest the Epilobiums, 

 and warn you all yet again and again, never to be 

 seduced by their pleasant beauty into giving them so 

 much as an inch. For, in that case, be assured that 

 they will not only claim, but occupy, not one, but 

 scores of ells ; and by their monstrous fecundity 



