MALLOW. 
139 
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 occasionally 
found in its root a wholesome and substantial 
food. We need hut look down to our feet to 
discover, throughout all Nature, proofs of her 
love and provident care; hut 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 hanks and borders of 
fields, and not scattered it over the meadows 
where its spreading branches would have in¬ 
jured the turf, and where, as cattle in general 
refuse to eat this plant, it would have soon over¬ 
run and smothered other vegetation. 
