Convolvulus. 
3*9 
cate green leaves are very slight and fragile, giving the plant 
a general appearance of frailty. And this, added to the know¬ 
ledge that its flowers last only one day, render it a very ap¬ 
propriate emblem of fleeting joys. It is a great favourite with 
little country lasses, who love to twine a wreath of its delicate 
leaves and blossoms round their hats, or twist it about their 
flaxen tresses. 
The large white bindweed or bearbine is another lovely 
member of this beautiful family, and, like its relatives, pos¬ 
sesses the singular property of denoting the sun’s course by 
twining in opposition to the path of day’s luminary, from right 
to left, and it is stated that, so tenacious is it of following its 
natural bias, that should it be diverted from it beyond possi¬ 
bility of resuming its way, it will perish. This flower loves to 
haunt humid spots, and may often be seen elegantly festoon¬ 
ing a row of drooping willows with its light fetters. Country 
people, too accustomed to the loveliness of its large white 
flowers to poetise over them, call them “old man’s nightcap.” 
St. Pierre, most delightful of botanists, had a great admiration 
for the bearbine; and well might any lover of nature, for its 
blossoms are exceeded by none in purity of whiteness or beauty 
of outline, nor are its heart-shaped leaves outrivalled by any 
in handsomeness. Never did maiden select a lovelier coronal 
with which to wreathe her brow than this: 
“ Thy brow we ’ll twine In sunny showers 
With white bearbine, Its wand’ring flowers 
And ’mid thy glossy tresses Shall wind their wild caresses.” 
We are too familiar with the loveliness of these wildings 
of nature to duly appreciate them; they are “too much with 
as ” to receive their due meed of praise: were they newly 
imported from some tropical clime, their novelty would startle 
us into enthusiasm, and their merits would be everywhere 
loudly proclaimed ; and yet we ever find the poet—that voice 
of a people’s soul — hymning the glories of his native wild 
flowers, to the almost total exclusion of their more polished 
sisterhood—the florists’ flowers. “ Lives there a man with 
soul so dead,” who, in gazing upon the blooming fields and 
woodlands of his native land, does not feel that those blossoms 
before him are indeed 
“ Bright missals from angelic throngs ”? 
