232 THE OPEN BOOK OF NATURE 
to-day are selfishness, greed, indolence, and every- 
thing that we know to be bad. LElder-trees around 
the house, or St. John’s Wort hung over its entrance, 
will not keep these evils away. They are “ foes of 
our own household.” We can get rid of them only 
by “ceasing to do evil and learning to do well.” 
Four-leaved Clover will confer no wisdom upon us ; 
wisdom comes by way of earnest inquiry, faithful 
application, and duty well done. 
In respect to plants you should learn to associate 
them with the situations in which they are found. 
You naturally associate seaweed with the sea, ferns 
with shady and protected grots, heather with the 
moorlands. There are plants which flourish best 
on the seashore, such as the Thrift, or Sea Pink, the 
Sea Campion, and the Oyster Plant. Others thrive 
in damp situations, such as the Marsh Ragwort, the 
Iris, the Ragged Robin, the Water-Mint, and the 
Spearworts. There are the flowers of the Pastures 
and Cornfields ; the plants of the Roadside, Hedge- 
row, and Woodlands. If you want to find, say, the 
Penny Cress (Thlaspi arvense) you must not look 
for it amongst the heather ; you are most likely to 
find it in cultivated fields. And if you desire to 
secure the sticky burs of the Burdock (Arctium 
lappa) you will look for them on the roadsides or 
in the hedgerows, not on the tops of mountains. 
Plants always adapt themselves to their surround- 
ings, and, of course, they thrive best in the sur- 
roundings to which they are adapted. The common 
Yellow Ragwort (Senecio Jacobea), of dry pastures, 
and the Marsh Ragwort (Senecio aquaticus) are prob- 
ably descendants from a common stock, but the 
