158 ANTIRRHINUM. VERBASCUM. 



The flowers were once applied to the purpose of caps hy the troops 

 of Fairies that did inhabit our deans and sylvan retreats : now our 

 little girls glove their fingers with them, putting them on the top of 

 each other in a pyramid to overflowing, and they call them %a'Oiei': 

 tijimblei. Boys inflate them by blowing into the bell, and then they 

 crack them by a smart stroke. They also suck the honey at the base 

 of the flower. Tempted by this nectar, the Bee enters deep within 

 the corolla, where, becoming imprisoned, it buzzes about with vex- 

 ation and rage. 



The Foxglove, pronounced to be " the most stately and beautiful 

 of our herbaceous plants," could not, of course, escape the eye of 

 Wordsworth ; and he has given in " the Prelude " to " Retrospect," 

 p. 223, a correct enough portrait of the plant in its last stage, or old 

 age. 



" Through quaint obliquities I might pursue 

 These cravings ; when the Foxglove, one by one, 

 Upwards through every stage of the tall stem 

 Had shed beside the public iray its bells. 

 And stood of all dismantled, save the last 

 Left at the tapering ladder's top, that seem'd 

 To bend, as doth a slender blade of grass, 

 Tipp'd with a rain drop. Fancy loved to seat. 

 Beneath the plant despoiled, but crested still 

 With this last relic soon itself to fall. 

 Some vagrant mother, whose arch little ones 

 All unconeern'd by her dejected plight, 

 Laugh'd, as with rival eagerness their hands 

 Gather'd the purple cups that round them lay, 

 Strewing the turf's green slope." 



418. Antirrhinum linaria = Linaria vulgaris. JSuttnvanb? 

 CBggS. — Borders of fields and gravelly hanks, frequent. It appeared 

 in many places, previously unknown to it, on the cuttings made for 

 the railways. Summer. 



419. A. minus = Linaria minor. Rare. D. In waste ground 

 about the Union Bridge, and if tlie botanist miss the plant, he will 

 not lose his pains by turning his examination on this beautiful struc- 

 ture, — the first of its kind erected in this country. It was opened 

 July 19, 1820. See Border Table Book, iii. p. 213.— B. Below 

 Coldstream Bridge, R. C. Embleton. — R. " AUl Water, Roxburgh- 

 shire." Arnott. Brit. Fl. p. 301. 



24. A. cymbalaria = Linaria cymbalaria. This pretty trailer has 

 established itself in so many gardens, on their walls and out-build- 

 ings, that its eradication would be now difficult, and certainly not 

 desirable. In the garden at Newwaterhaugh it gives much interest 

 to a dull partition wall ; and in one of its tufts a hedge-sparrow found 

 a fit place for the concealment of its nest. It is a favourite window 

 flower with cottagers, who know it as the jJflotJ)ersottI)ou£ian'U£i. 



420. Verbascum thapsus. Waste grounds, rare. N. "On the 

 bed of Till near Wooler," Winch. Banks of Wooler-water near 

 Coldgate-mill, Jas. Mitchell ; and about half a mile above Middleton, 



