24 A GARDEN DIARY 
indeed it has been ascertained that were it thus 
neatly tucked and tidied away, the level of the 
ocean would be only altered by less than a 
hundred feet. It is due mainly to the untiring 
vigour, to the extraordinary binding power of 
plants, that this consummation has been averted. 
Their office has been to hinder a tendency which, 
even if it had not ended in the submergence of 
the whole earth, would at least have washed and 
pared away its irregularities to one deadly 
monotonous level. Trees and bushes do much 
in this direction, but it is the little clinging 
weeds, which as gardeners we detest, and would 
so gladly annihilate: these crowfoots—why not, 
by the way, crow/eef ?—with their crowding 
roots; these knotgrasses, these clinging bind- 
weeds,—it is such as they, backed by sea-spurreys, 
and bents, and by reeds and rushes innumerable, 
that do more to keep the waters of the globe in 
order, and to maintain dry land, than man, with 
all his dykes, dams, embankments, and such like 
accumulations, since first he began to strut or to 
caper over its surface. 
But the journey which lies before one’s thoughts 
when once they embark upon this river we call 
“Life,” is indeed too big for them even imagina- 
tively to attempt. Our boats are so small, and 
the river so wide, that one soon loses sight of 
shore. Even if, abandoning these perplexing 
living things, one falls back upon the mere in- 
