FOXTON FIRBY : NOTES ON FIELD BOTANY. 



167 



husky capsules as tlie soft wind stirs the flowering grasses, amongst which 

 the bright colour of its yawning corollas may still be seen mingling with the 

 red-blossomed Sorrel, Rumex acetosa, and the fair disks of the Great White 

 Ox-eye, Chr^ysantJiemum leuccmtheinum, Avhile the Plantain, Plantago media, 

 lifts up its fragrant spikes, and adds their purfume to that of the sweet-scented 

 Meadow-grass, Antlioxantlium odoratum, to the presence of which it is said 

 so much of the well-known odour of new mown hay is owing, and is sup- 

 posed to be'a principal cause of " hay- fever," and the pretty Melilot Melilotus 

 officinalis, or Wild Laburnum. Here and there. Ragged Eobin, Lychnis 

 Flos-cucidi, throws abroad its loose panicles of fringy rose-coloured corollas, 

 one of the prettiest of our native wild plants ; and close at hand, the broad 

 white heads of rayed flowers of Sneeze wort Yarrow, AcMllea ptarmica, 

 famous for its cephalic virtues, are accompanied by the violet-blue oblong 

 spikes of Self-Heal, Prunella vtdgaris, another species of the Labiate family ; 

 its rustic names of Carpenter's herb. Hook heal, and Sicklewort, will express 

 the qualities which it was supposed to possess of healing wounds and abra- 

 sions. In Germany, France, and elsewhere, the same faith existed in it as 

 an excellent vulnerary ; so that it was pro verbally said " that he needed 

 neither physician, nor Chimrgeon, that had self-heal and sanicle to help 

 himself." 



Lowly seated amongst the swaying grasses, through which the golden 

 cups of the straight- stemmed, many flowering Ranunculus ]philonotis appear 

 to struggle for pre-eminence, we find the tiny spikes of Paul's Betony, 

 Veronica serpyllifolia, with thyme-like leaves, and delicately-veined light 

 blue flowers, so different in appearance from the Speedwell group in general, 

 that no cursory inquirer would suppose them to belong to the same order. 

 This little plant was formerly dedicated to the saint whose name it bears, 

 from the belief in its medicinal excellence. The papilionaceous flower in 

 yellow terminal clusters, clinging to other plants in its vicinity by means of 

 its leaf-tendrils, is the Yellow Everlasting Pea, Latliyrus pratensis, one of the 

 valuable Leguminosoe, a highly interesting order of plants ; several of the 

 species under the general name of pulse, afford us nutritious food, the sub- 

 stance of leguminous seeds consisting in a great degree of caseine, the 

 nitrogenous principle of milk and cheese. Many are valuable in medicine, 

 several are deleterious, and others supply valuable fodder for cattle j the one 

 before us is greatly rehshed by cows and horses. 



Our talk of fields and flowers must end for the present. Did either 

 space or time permit of it, we might wander to the upland heaths, the corn- 



