146 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
sometimes varying to a whitish, or inclining to 
a bluish 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 occasion¬ 
ally found in its root a wholesome and substan¬ 
tial 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 
simplest appearance. 
It is, nevertheless, fortunate for the husband¬ 
man 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. 
