168 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
some spot or other of the earth is always becoming 
consecrated. 
There is, however, something curious about this but- 
terbur. It is related to the coltsfoot of the arable fields, 
and the coltsfoot sends up a stalk without a leaf, and 
flowers before any green appears. So, too, the butter. 
bur of the river flowers before its great leaf comes. 
Nothing is really common either, for everything is so 
local that you may spend years, and in fact a lifetime, 
in a district and never see a flower plentiful enough in 
another. Just where I am staying now the pennywort 
grows on every wall attached to the mortar between the 
cobbles. In some places you may search the roads in 
vain for this little plant, which has this merit, that its 
rounded leaf presents a fresh green in February. It does 
not die away, it appears as green as spring, and pieces 
of the wall are ornamented with it as thickly as the iron- 
headed nails in old doors. One plant grows out of the 
hard stem of a hawthorn tree, as if it were a parasite 
like the mistletoe ; probably there is some crack which 
the plant itself has hidden. If every plant and every 
flower were found in all places the charm of locality 
would not exist. Everything varies, and that gives the 
interest. These purplish stones, where they lie in the 
water, seem to have a kind of growth upon them—small 
knobs on the surface. On examination each small rough- 
ness or knob will be found composed of a number of 
very minute fragments of stone. It is a sort of cell, 
probably built by a species of caddis. There was hardly 
a stone in the rivers that was not dotted with these little 
habitations, so that it seemed difficult to overlook them ; 
but upon showing one to a mighty hunter to know 
the local name, he declared he had never noticed it 
before, and added that he did not care for such little 
