not known) was the type of
beauty. No higher praise could be given to a beauty than that she was
"Hedera formosior alba." These varieties are scarcely mentioned by
Gerard and Parkinson, and probably were not much valued; they are now in
greater repute, and nothing will surpass them for rapidly and
effectually covering any bare spaces.

I need scarcely add that the Ivy is so completely hardy that it will
grow in any aspect and in any soil; that its flowers are the staple food
of bees in the late autumn; and that all the varieties grow easily from
cuttings at almost any time of the year.

FOOTNOTES:

[130:1] Sheep feeding on Ivy--

"My sheep have Honeysuckle bloom for pasture; Ivy grows
In multitudes around them, and blossoms like the Rose."

THEOCRITUS, _Idyll_ v. (_Calverley_).

[132:1]

"The Ivy-mesh
Shading the Ethiop berries."--KEATS, _Endymion_.

KECKSIES.

_Burgundy._

And nothing teems
But hateful Docks, rough Thistles, Kecksies, Burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.

_Henry V_, act v, sc. 2 (51).

Kecksies or Kecks are the dried and withered stems of the Hemlock, and
the name is occasionally applied to the living plant. It seems also to
have been used for any dry weeds--

"All the wyves of Tottenham came to se that syght,
With Wyspes, and Kexis, and ryschys ther lyght,
To fech hom ther husbandes, that wer tham trouth plyght."

"The Tournament of Tottenham," in
RITSON'S _Ancient Songs and Ballads_.

KNOT-GRASS.

_Lysander._

Get you gone, you dwarf;
You minimus, of hindering Knot-grass made;
You bead, you Acorn.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iii, sc. 2 (328).

The Knot-grass is the Polygonum aviculare, a British weed, low,
straggling, and many-jointed, hence its name of Knot-grass. There is no
doubt that this is the plant meant, and its connection with a dwarf is
explained by the belief, probably derived from some unrecorded character
detected by the "doctrine of signatures," that the growth of children
could be stopped by a diet of Knot-grass. Steevens quotes Beaumont and
Fletcher to this effect, and this will probably explain the epithet
"hindering." But there may be another explanation. Johnston tells u