PT. III. OR POISONED BY VEGETABLE GROWTH? 151 



Oil our downs and sheep-walks as well nigh to smother 

 tlie grass with its caresses. Practical farmers nip all 

 this vegetable affection in the bud, and forbid their 

 crops the society of any followers or strangers what- 

 ever ; though, alas ! how often, like the parents of 

 Pyramus and Thisbe, ' vetuere quod non potuere 

 vetare.' In this case the crops and the weeds ripen 

 their seeds simultaneously (which is one constant cause 

 of propinquity, or sociability, in cultivated annuals) ; 

 and as they are threshed and re-sown by our own 

 hands, their reunion is certainly not effected by any 

 choice of theirs. But ask the farmer if these social 

 plants benefit his crops, and ask the physiologist how 

 dean crops and other zmsocial plants clear their roots 

 of their own poisonous excretions. But these are cases 

 of ephemeral or annual ilhcit love in a state of civilisa- 

 tion, where it is notorious that the course of this passion 

 never did run smooth. In a state of nature, where it Sociability 



of holly 



does not stand upon consent of friends, the liollv and and beech 



-'■ owing to 



the beech are a pair, and arc supposed to have a l^g^ii^X" 

 mutual perennial affection one for the other. This is othe7 ^^'^"^ 

 from the holly bearing shade better than other plants. 

 Under very dense beech woods holly will grow even 

 where the seedlings of the beech themselves cannot 

 exist. ' Densas ' is Virgil's epithet for beeches, and 

 they will grow nearer to each other, and produce a 

 more intense shade, than perhaps any other tree in 

 nature ; so that sometimes the silver supports of the 

 green canopy stand without a leaf to interfere with 



