OUR COMPOUND FLOWERS. 121 



injured by an insect-gall (Berw. Fl. i. p. 176); for normally they 

 are corymbose. They are from 4 to 10 in number, on rough downy 

 stalks. Scales of the involucre very unequal, dark green, with scarcely 

 paler margins, and without setae or glands. ^ — This is not common, but 

 it occurs scattered over the district. B. I have seen it on the sides 

 of pathways leading through fields in the How-of-the-Merse ; and I 

 have many specimens from about Langton. — D. Haiden Dean. — N. 

 Cheviot, on the Common burn, G. R. Tate ; and in the Henhole, Dr. 

 F. Douglas. Aug., Sept. 



There are, exclusive of some doubtful species, 131 syngenesious 

 plants in the British Flora, and 127 of them are considered to be 

 truly indigenous. Of this number, 72 grow wild in our district; but 

 two appear to have been naturalized, and two are met with as stragglers 

 only, being introduced, from time to time, with agricultural seeds. 

 They are all herbaceous, dying down to the root every year ; but of 

 some coarse species — "rude Burs and Thistles" — the stalks remain, 

 withered and dead, until the ensuing spring, of no use excepting to 

 remind us of the unseemliness and undesirableness of an age prolonged 

 beyond the death of the mind and its faculties. They are very 

 generally distributed, from the salt-marsh of the sea-shore, and the 

 links that gird it, to near the summit of our highest hills, although 

 these do not rise high enough to afford us any alpine species : and 

 they possess themselves of every kind of soil and site, a considerable 

 proportion choosing in preference waste grounds and road-sides, as if 

 they were conscious of the vulgarity of their habit and aspect. Thus 

 while one species only (Antennaria dioica) is found exclusively on our 

 open and breezy hills, 9 in our deans and amidst woods and copses, 

 9 in our meadows, grassy muirs and pastures, 9 in our marshes and 

 by our rivers and burns, 8 in our fields as weeds, not fewer than 32 

 occupy the way-side, the hedge-bottom, the wastes that lie apart 

 everywhere, and the rubbish-places in villages and onsteads. And 

 while the Aster cannot grow but in its saline marsh, the maritime 

 Pyrethrum only on rocks bedewed with sea-spray, and most have 

 only a little wider range, a few, such as the Dandelion and the Daisy, 

 may be said to be almost ubiquitary. From this their general distri- 

 bution, and their numbers, we might naturally infer that the share 

 they contribute to the clothing of the earth's surface must be very 

 considerable ; and although such is the case, yet it is less so than may 

 be imagined, for only a few of the species are, properly speaking, 

 gregarious, and the herbage of most does not spread nor stool upon 

 the ground. Yet certes our green fields would lose half of their 

 charms were the Daisy to desert them, — our pastures and muirs half 

 of their liveliness without the Horse-gowans, the Hawkbits, and 

 similar flowers; — our road-sides and lanes are gay when bordered with 

 the golden rosettes of the Dandelion, — our deans with the Golden-rod 

 and the Hieracia ; — nor do I much dishke the forest of large leaves 

 that the Butter-bur annually plants by our river-sides ;— nor must I 

 pass unnoted the varied race of them, from the tall Thistle to the 

 groundling Apargise, which, in autumn, meets the pleased eye every- 

 where, not least so as it follows the froUcksome and uncertain play 



