THE DANDELION. 
75 
J 
I this flower, the contrast of its colors, and simplicity of 
attitude which it displays when springing from out its 
jj grassy tuft, can hardly be surpassed by any from another 
region. By its side peeps out the bright gleeful blue 
j eyes of the little germander speedwell, in joyful gaiety 
- — a lowly domestic plant that loves and seeks alliance 
with its kind, and in small family associations, by united 
I splendor, decorates the foliage around. And there we 
find the stitch-wort, mingling her snowy bloom immac- 
ulately pure, with pallid green : too delicate to vegetate 
I alone, it seeks the shelter of the hedge or copse, trem- 
i bles when the breeze goes by, and seems an emblem 
|J of innocence and grace. And there the bright-flowered 
lotus with its pea-like bloom, in social union glows as 
burnished gold, animating and gilding with its lustre 
j| all the tribes that spring near it ; and fifty others, too, 
we note, which, though common and disregarded by 
reason of our familiarity with them, or expelled from 
favor by the novelty of far-fetched fair ones, deserve 
| more attention than we are disposed to afford them, 
j There are few plants which we look upon with more 
j perfect contempt than that common product of every 
soil, the ‘ dandelion.’ Every child knows it, and the 
j little village groups which perambulate the hedges for 
the first offspring of the year, amuse themselves by 
hanging circlets of its stalks linked like a chain round 
their necks: yet if we examine this in all the stages of 
its growth, we shall pronounce it a beautiful production ; 
! and its blossom, though often a solitary one, is perhaps 
the very first that enlivens the sunny bank of the hedge 
in the opening year, peeping out from withered leaves, 
dry stalks, and desolation, as a herald, telling us that 
nature is not dead, but reposing, ^nd will awaken to life 
again. And some of us* perhaps, can remember the 
pleasure it afforded us in early days, when we first 
noticed its golden blossoms under the southern shelter 
of the cottage hedge, thinking that the ‘winter was 
past,’ and that ‘ the time of the singing of birds was 
come;’ and yet, possibly, when seen, it may renew 
some of that childish delight, though the fervor of ex- 
pectation is cooled by experience and time. The form 
