any tells us that bouncing-bet has "escaped from
cultivation"--she has been thrust out, but unresentfully lives and
smiles; opening her tender pinky-opalescent flowers adown the dusty
roadsides, and even on barren gravel-beds in railroad cuts.
Butter-and-eggs, tansy, chamomile, spiked loosestrife, velvet-leaf,
bladder-campion, cypress spurge, live-for-ever, star of Bethlehem,
money-vine,--all have seen better days, but now are flower-tramps. Even
the larkspur, beloved of children, the moss-pink, and the grape-hyacinth
may sometimes be seen growing in country fields and byways. The homely
and cheerful blossoms of the orange-tawny ephemeral lily, and the
spotted tiger-lily, whose gaudy colors glow with the warmth of far
Cathay--their early home--now make gay many of our roadsides and crowd
upon the sweet cinnamon roses of our grandmothers, which also are
undaunted garden exiles.

Driving once along a country road, I saw on the edge of a field an
expanse of yellow bloom which seemed to be an unfamiliar field-tint. It
proved to be a vast bed of coreopsis, self-sown from year to year; and
the blackened outlines of an old cellar wall in its midst showed that in
that field once stood a home, once there a garden smiled.

I am always sure when I see bouncing-bet, butter-and-eggs, and tawny
lilies growing in a tangle together that in their midst may be found an
untrodden door-stone, a fallen chimney, or a filled-in well.

Still broader field expanses are filled with old-country plants. In June
a golden glory of bud and blossom covers the hills and fields of Essex
County in Massachusetts from Lynn to Danvers, and Ryal Side to Beverly;
it is the English gorse or woad-wax, and by tradition it was first
brought to this country in spray and seed as a packing for some of the
household belongings of Governor Endicott. Thrown out in friendly soil,
the seeds took root and there remain in the vicinity of their first
American homes. It is a stubborn squatter, yielding only to scythe,
plough, and hoe combined.

Chicory or blue weed was, it is said, brought from England by Governor
Bowdoin as food for his sheep. It has spread till its extended presence
has been a startling surprise to all English visiting botanists. It
hurts no one's fields, for it invades chiefly waste and neglected
land--the "dear common flower"--and it has redeemed many a city suburb
of vacant lots, many a railroad ash heap from the abomination of
desolation.

Whitew