Dandelion. 
(ORACLE.) 
I T OW often you may have passed by this common wild 
1 flower, the Dandelion , as a plant possessing little attrac¬ 
tion ! And yet, not only is it extremely useful for manifold 
culinary and medicinal purposes, but, under its presumed ora¬ 
cular character, many a little beating heart has it caused to 
throb yet more merrily, or more wearily heave ; many a bright 
eye has it made to gleam brighter with anticipated triumph, or 
dim with foreboding tears ; for this golden-rayed blossom, like 
some others of its floral sisterhood, is often selected to decide 
its fair questioner’s fate : “ He loves me,” or, “ He loves me 
not.” Alas ! what histories of joy or misery may the answers 
to those simple questions betoken ! 
Not only, however, do the responses of this oracle foreshadow 
the fate of our heart’s affection, but to the schoolboy who, bred 
up amid the secrets of Nature, often tries 
“To win the secret of a weed's plain heart,” 
the dandelion frequently serves to tell another tale: gently 
plucking it from its hollow stem, he blows softly upon its fea¬ 
thery coronet, and away flies the ethereal spray. “One o’clock!” 
he shouts, and then gives another puff at his floral timepiece, 
and off careers another fleecy cloud : “Two o’clock !” he cries, 
and again repeats the experiment, until not a single tiny plume 
is left on the poor bald-headed flower; as many puffs as it 
takes to scatter the down, so many hours of the day, say the 
little rustics, have fleeted by. They can scarcely think, these 
lads and lasses, that they are aiding the operations of Nature 
by thus dispersing, attached to that light and pretty spray, the 
flower’s seed. William Howitt thus charmingly alludes to the 
custom: 
