LOVE'S FOOT CRANE'S-BILL. 115 



each bears two flowers. These subordinate flower-stalks 

 have a few small brown scales at the point where they leave 

 the general flower-stalk, and are only about a quarter its 

 length. The calyx is composed of five sepals, and the 

 corolla of five petals, heart-shaped, and a purplish red in 

 colour. With one exception, all our crane's-bills have their 

 flowers springing in pairs from the flower-stalks, a feature 

 that may readily be seen in all the examples of the genus 

 that we have figured. The stamens are ten in number, 

 and the anthers that surmount them are a pule and lilac 

 blue in tint. The dove's foot crane's-bill is one of our 

 commonest species, and may be found in flower from May 

 to August. It should be looked for in dry pastures and on 

 high sloping banks. Where it grows by itself the stems 

 are often almost horizontal, but when it is amongst other 

 plants they are drawn up. 



Those of our readers who really want to learn more about 

 our familiar wild flowers will do well not merely to read 

 of them in this or other books, and so derive their im- 

 pressions through the eyes of others, but to search for 

 them themselves, to gather them, and in these days of 

 art schools to sketch them. Then, again, they may be dried, 

 and thus preserved for years, care being taken to record the 

 date and locality ; such a collection rapidly becomes most 

 interesting, both for its own sake and from the associations 

 it recalls. Another good plan is to make notes for oneself 

 about them ; the knowledge we have acquired for ourselves 

 has a freshness that the same facts read up out of books 

 can never possess. As a specimen of the sort of thing 

 we mean, we here give our own rough notes made when 

 we were preparing the present drawing. " Leaves dull, 

 very little shine on them, and as the plant often grows 



