150 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



in beauty. Our present plant, the pennywort, we find on 

 another of the ' ' happy hunting grounds " of the botanist 

 old walls and roofs. Wherever in our rural walks we come 

 across an old brick wall or stone fence, we may generally 

 expect to find some one or two things at least, the waving 

 fronds of the hart's-tongue fern or some of the more 

 delicate wall-growing ferns, as the black spleenwort or the 

 wall-rue, the mass of golden yellow stars or succulent leaves 

 of the stonecrop, a name in itself suggestive ; the fragrant 

 blossoms of the plant pre-eminently called the wallflower, 

 the delicate foliage and blossoms of the cymbalaria or ivy- 

 leafed toad-flax, or perchance the curious plant we have 

 here illustrated. The wall pennywort is not so freely dis- 

 tributed as many of our plants, though in many localities 

 it is abundantly met with. Those of our readers whose 

 idea of a wall is derived from a town experience, will 

 hardly realise how so formal and perpendicular a mass of 

 brickwork could afford much spoil to the lover of plants, 

 nor indeed can it; but those who are familiar with the 

 fences, half natural rock, half built of rough hewn stone, 

 adherent by the roughest cementing or by their own sheer 

 weight, that are so picturesque a feature in some of our 

 country districts, will readily understand how their rugged 

 tops and numerous interstices afford many a resting- 

 place for the plants that grace them. The pennywort is 

 chiefly found in the high-lying districts in the west of 

 England and Scotland, though it may be not uncommonly 

 seen along the southern coast of England and in the midland 

 and eastern counties. Its true home is not in the fertile 

 flats of the east of England, but where the keen air of the 

 mountain side can fan it and the rocky masses give it a 

 congenial resting-place. 



