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the Woody Nightshade, with its treacherous berries looking 
lusciously crimson and juicy. The illustrative poem being 
“a fact, literally rendered,” I need give no prose descrip¬ 
tion of the same scene. The Blackbenies, Haws, Hips, and 
the clustered Nightshade berries are represented in the 
plate. 
Here must end my third and last sociable gossip—for such 
these chapters seem to me, rather than formal deeds of author¬ 
ship, and such I would fain have them appear to my readers. 
My book cannot play the part of a literary and scientific 
omnibus, and transport its friends at once into the Fairy- 
realm of Nature’s Romance ; hut if it only serves as an hum¬ 
ble finger-post on the road, pointing towards the clime its 
author loves so well, her effort will not have been a vain 
one, nor unproductive of some degree of good to her fellow 
sojourners in this proverbially “ matter of fact” world. We 
have abundance of books published for the pui-pose of making 
us xviser: My ambition would be, that mankind—in which 
icoman-kind is ever prominently ranked—should be made 
happier by some fortunate work of mine :—and if by any 
added associations of thought or fancy, I have in these pages 
enhanced the pleasure with which one person contemplates a 
ffower, “ e’en though the meanest bud that bears the name,”— 
I shall have attained a step nearer to my object. 
