146 LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
to a blueish cast, with three or four darker streaks 
running from the base. 
The flower, stalk, leaf, and root, of this plant are 
all beneficial to man. With its different juices are 
composed syrups and ointments, equally agreeable to 
the taste and conducive to health. The way-lost 
traveller has occasionally found in its root a whole- 
some and substantial food. We need but look down 
to our feet to discover, throughout all Nature, proofs 
of her love and provident care ; but this affectionate 
mother has often concealed, in plants as well as in 
human beings, the greatest virtues under the sim- 
plest appearance. 
It is, nevertheless, fortunate for the husbandman 
that Nature should have assigned to the Mallow a 
place on the banks and borders of fields, and not 
scattered it over the meadows, where its spreading 
branches would have injured the turf, and where, as 
cattle in general refuse to eat this plant, it would 
have soon overrun and smothered other vegetation. 
