155 
Not a flower 
But shows some touch in freckle, streak, or stain 
Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires 
Their balmy odours and imparts their hues, 
And bathes their eyes with nectar and includes 
In grains as countless as the sea-side sand 
The forms which sprinkle all the earth. 
Happy who walks with Him! Whom what he finds 
Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower. 
Or what he views of beautiful or grand 
In nature — from the broad majestic oak 
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun — 
Prompts with the resemblance of a present God. — Cowper. 
Lobelia TJrens, now found only in a small portion of our * 
district, may in olden times have flourished in other places 
in the South of England. Even now its seeds may lie 
buried, and if the seeds should be moved up by the plough, 
or by the spade, the plant may exhibit itself in some similar 
situation. Most extraordinary is the suspension of vegetable 
life. In ploughing an inch or two deeper than usual, the 
husbandman gives vitality to the wild mustard (commonly 
called charlock) whose seed may have been below the region 
of vegetation for many a year, and, behold, his field of corn 
is almost choked by the luxuriant yellow crop ! Grains 
have been found in the Egyptian mummies where they had 
remained for 2000 years, and, wonderful to say, when sown 
in the ground have vegetated and come to perfect plants. 
The wild flowers, and Eerns, and sedges of the bogs, die 
when the ground is thoroughly drained. Let the drains be 
choked, and the dry land become a marsh again, and then 
the rushes and carnation grass, and all the wet plants appear. 
How comes this to pass ? JN'ot because new seed is deposited, 
for all the ground around may be in excellent cultivation, 
and altogether destitute of any such plant. There has 
been a suspension of vegetable life in the buried seed, and 
when the soil is in a suitable condition, then does germination 
and fructification arise. It is not impossible that the fresh 
earth, cast up in working the railway, may add some fresh 
flower to the neighbourhood, and a vegetable that existed 
in the days of Canute may reappear in the vale of the Axe. 
It may be interesting to our classical readers if we furnish 
