"The flower is very similar to the scented violet, only it is of a pale grayish blue. I have painted two roots side by side, one of the scented, one of the dog-violet; also a specimen of the white violet, which is not so common as that of the dark kind, but its smell is quite as delicious."
The children were delighted to recognize, among others, sketches of daisies, cowslips, buttercups, wood-anemones, wild hyacinths, forget-me-nots, eyebright, red and white clover, and many kinds of flowering grasses and graceful fern leaves.
"What is that?" they said, as they saw something that looked curious but not pretty.
"That is one of the sketches I took in Cornwall two or three miles from the Land's End. It is a poor, unhappy furze-bush, covered with dodder. The dodder is what is called a parasitical plant; that is, a plant that lives entirely on another. There are several kinds of dodders: some live entirely on flax, some on nettles, but those that stick to clover and furze-bushes are the most common in this country.
"When the seed of a dodder dropped into the ground begins to grow, it feels about for the kind of plant it wants to live upon: if it cannot find it, it dies.
"This furze dodder, you see, has found what it wanted, and, having done so, began at once to coil its pink thread-like stem on that of the furze. Now it had gained its footing, and threw out a great many more fine stems in all directions, after the fashion of strawberry runners, rooting as it grew. There are thousands of little dodder plants sucking the life out of the furze. I have seen many of the bushes quite smothered, and even killed, by this unpleasant and greedy plant.
"When you are older, if you study the ways of plants, you will find them quite as interesting as those of animals. They have to get their living; and some, like the dodder, prefer to get it at the expense of another; and others resort to all kinds of plans to keep themselves and their kinds alive.
"The acid of the pretty wood-sorrel is a poison, so nothing will eat it; and the buttercups growing in meadows are untouched by cattle, because of the poison in their leaves and stems.
"I might tell you of many other plants that live in safety because they are defended by poison, or thorns, or prickles, or some peculiar shape. The leaves of the common holly are only prickly on the lower branches, where it needs protection from browsing cattle.
"Then there are wonderful contrivances for keeping not only the single plant but its kind alive, which you will learn one day.