h has fancy to do with such things! How grand
is the idea of a camel or an elephant meekly kneeling down to receive or
deposit its load! how dignified I should have felt had I thus descended
from one of those noble animals! whilst this mode of being deposited by
a poor little donkey made us all laugh! Truly, 'there is but a step
between the sublime and the ridiculous;' and my adventure certainly
smacked of the latter. But Fanny had conquered; and, as if with one
stroke to confirm her victory, and to rejoice over it, she suddenly
turned over on her back, cracked the girths of the old saddle, and
rolled over and over in the dust with all four legs up in the air. This
was too much for endurance; so, leaving George to readjust the saddle as
best he might, and bring home our basket of spoils, I turned back, and
sauntered homewards with my bunch of 'timely-flouring bulbous violets'
in my hand. At Kersbrook I discovered a new treasure--one which,
however, I afterwards found to be common, although it was then unknown
to me--and it was some time before I could make out what it was. I took
it for a saxifrage, but could find nothing under that head which exactly
answered to it. It was, I at last discovered, the golden saxifrage
(_Chrysosplenium oppositifolium_) or opposite-leaved sengreen, nearly
allied to the saxifrages, and of the natural order saxifrage, but not
one of them. I found it fringing the side of the brook between the wall
and the water. It grows about four or five inches high, with branched
stems bearing very succulent, kidney-shaped leaves opposite each
other--the radicle leaves on long foot-stalks, whilst those of the
stem-leaves are much shorter. The flowers, which are of a bright
greenish-yellow, grow in small umbels; and the whole plant has a
yellowish hue. The uppermost flower in general bears ten stamens, whilst
the next boasts of but eight each. Its capsules are two-beaked,
one-celled, and two-valved, the seeds numerous and roundish. It is named
from _chrysos_, 'gold,' and _splen_, 'the spleen.' There is another
specimen much like this, of which I have spoken, _Chrysosplenium
alternitifolium_; but it is larger, handsomer, and less common. In the
Vosges this plant is much used--as our own water-cress is in
England--for a salad, under the name of _Cresson de Roche_. There is a
little flower, elegant and singular in appearance, though, as its name
indicates, not one of much splendour, which resembles the golden
s