158 
LANGUAGE OP FLOWERS. 
DANDELION. 
THE RUSTIC ORACLE. 
When you bend your steps through the 
plain, or ascend the hill-side, or stand on the 
mountain-top, look down to the greensward at 
your feet, and you will perceive patches of ver¬ 
dure, covered with golden flowers, or with light 
and transparent globes. It is the Dandelion, 
the oracle of the fields, which may be every 
where consulted. Like man, it is spread over 
the whole face of the globe ; it is found in the 
four quarters of the world, near the pole as be¬ 
neath the equator, on the margin of rivers and 
streams as well as on sterile rocks : every where 
it offers to the hand that would gather, or the 
eye that would consult them, its flowers, which 
shut and open at certain hours, serving the soli¬ 
tary shepherd for a clock, while its feathery 
tufts are his barometer, predicting calm or 
storm. 
