94 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



than the thousands of seeds that settle down on his land, 

 wafted by the winds from the neighbouring- common, 

 the railway embankment, or the fields of some more careless 

 cultivator of the soil. War should be ruthlessly declared 

 by the farmer on every thistle long before its ripened seeds 

 are dispersed all over the country side. The dispersion of 

 the seeds is an admirable and most interesting- provision of 

 nature for the propagation of the species, but were we agri- 

 culturalists we should regard the hoe or the reaping-hook 

 as an admirable counter-provision. The particular thistle 

 now before us is perhaps somewhat less abundant than some 

 of the others, but this is only a comparative lack, for it is 

 very f reel}' to be met with almost everywhere over England 

 and Ireland, though in Scotland it becomes less common. It- 

 is a curious fact that, though the thistle is the national em- 

 blem of Scotland, most of our ordinary English thistles, 

 things that we find in almost every hedge-bank, and on 

 every piece of waste soil, become much less common when 

 we have crossed the border. 



The painted lady butterfly (Cynthia cardui), a very 

 generally distributed and gaily-coloured species, begins its 

 career as a caterpillar on a thistle. The species favoured 

 are the nodding thistle, the spear-plume, and the present one, 

 the field thistle. The spiny caterpillar will be found during 

 June and July. It is brown in colour, and has two yellow 

 lines on its back, and one along each side. The perfect 

 insect is somewhat uncertain in appearance, being some 

 years very abundant, and in others comparatively rare. It 

 is one of our larger species; the general ground-colour of 

 the wings is orange-red, with various spots and mottlings 

 of black, and at the tip of the front wings the black is en- 

 livened by one large and four small white spots. The 



