s in showers along the mountain turf; her delicate
crosslets are separate, though constellate, as the rubied daisy. But the
king-cup--(blessing be upon it always no less)--crowds itself sometimes
into too burnished flame of inevitable gold. I don't know if there was
anything in the {111} darkness of this last spring to make it brighter in
resistance; but I never saw any spaces of full warm yellow, in natural
colour, so intense as the meadows between Reading and the Thames; nor did I
know perfectly what purple and gold meant, till I saw a field of park land
embroidered a foot deep with king-cup and clover--while I was correcting my
last notes on the spring colours of the Royal Academy--at Aylesbury.

9. And there are two other questions of extreme subtlety connected with
this main one. What shall we say of the plants whose entire destiny is
parasitic--which are not only sometimes, and _im_pertinently, but always,
and pertinently, out of place; not only out of the right place, but out of
any place of their own? When is mistletoe, for instance, in the right
place, young ladies, think you? On an apple tree, or on a ceiling? When is
ivy in the right place?--when wallflower? The ivy has been torn down from
the towers of Kenilworth; the weeds from the arches of the Coliseum, and
from the steps of the Araceli, irreverently, vilely, and in vain; but how
are we to separate the creatures whose office it is to abate the grief of
ruin by their gentleness,

"wafting wallflower scents
From out the crumbling ruins of fallen pride,
And chambers of transgression, now forlorn,"

from those which truly resist the toil of men, and conspire against their
fame; which are cunning to consume, and {112} prolific to encumber; and of
whose perverse and unwelcome sowing we know, and can say assuredly, "An
enemy hath done this."

10. Again. The character of strength which gives prevalence over others to
any common plant, is more or less consistently dependent on woody fibre in
the leaves; giving them strong ribs and great expanding extent; or spinous
edges, and wrinkled or gathered extent.

Get clearly into your mind the nature of those two conditions. When a leaf
is to be spread wide, like the Burdock, it is supported by a framework of
extending ribs like a Gothic roof. The supporting function of these is
geometrical; every one is constructed like the girders of a bridge, or
beams of a floor, with all manner of science in the distr