200 
RURAL HOURS. 
The ancient poets mingled tlie ears of wheat and the poppy in 
their verses : 
" The meanest cottager 
Hispopjnj grows among the corn" 
says Cowley, in his translation of Virgil ; and in onr own day Mr. 
Hood, in his pleasing picture of Ruth, introduces both plants, 
when describing her beautiful color : 
" And on her cheek an autumn flush. 
Like poppies grown with corn.'' 
In short, so well established is this association of the poppy and 
wheat, by the long course of observation from time immemorial to 
the present season, that the very modistes of Paris, when they wish 
to trim a straw bonnet with field plants, are careful to mingle the 
poppy with heads of wheat in their artificial flowers. Fickle 
Fashion herself is content to leave these plants, year after year, en- 
twined together in her wreaths. 
But in spite of this general prevalence of the poppy throughout 
the grain-fields of the Old World, and its acknowledged claim to 
a place beside the wheat, it is quite unknown here as a weed. 
With us this ancient association is broken up. Never ha\dng seen 
it ourselves, we have frequently asked farmers from different parts 
of the country if they had ever found it among their wheat, and 
thus far the answer has always been the same ; they had never seen 
the flower out of gardens. Among our cottage gardens it is very 
common. It is, however, naturalized about Westchester, in Penn- 
sylvania, and may possibly be found in some other isolated spots ; 
but in all this range of wheat-growing country, among the great 
