104 
THE MORAL OP FLOWERS. 
The common wild English honeysuckle, or woodbine, 
is a native of most parts of Europe, growing in woods 
and hedges, and is also found in the Chinese empire. 
Fragrant and elegant as it is, it must be a welcome 
visiter wherever it appears; and few flowers, either for 
their exquisite odour or for their frail and clinging 
character, have received more poetical eulogy. It 
may, perhaps, in winding its spiral coil, compress the 
young tree too tightly, and in some degree injure its 
circulation ; yet it fully compensates the injury, by the 
grace and beauty of its odoriferous chaplets, which 
perfume the air to a great distance, especially in cloudy 
weather, and at morning and evening, when the sun 
has not power to exhale their sweetness. Thus Cowper 
celebrates it: 
“ Copious of flowers, the woodbine, pale and wan, 
But well compensating her sickly looks 
With never-cloying odours, early and late.” 
It is, however, in shady situations alone that it assumes 
the “ sickly looks” the poet mentions, for when more 
exposed to the sun it is beautifully streaked with varying 
shades of red and yellow. 
In common with most of our trailing plants, it climbs 
from east to west, and its seeking support from every 
