The little flowers of which I now speak,--with their minute blossoms, scarcely bigger than pins' heads, scattered singly among their low-lying leaves,--are the Veronicas, particularly that called the Wild Germander, with its flowers coloured like no others, nor like any thing else, except the Turquoise; the Scarlet Pimpernel; the Red Eyebright; and the Bastard Pimpernel, the smallest of flowers. All these, however, and their like, I must pass over (as the rest of the world does) without noticing them particularly; but not without commending them to the reader's best leisure, and begging him to give to each one of them more of it than I have any hope he will bestow on me, or than he would bestow half so well if he did.
But there are many others that come into bloom this month, some of which we cannot pass unnoticed if we would. We shall meet with most of them in this green Lane, and beside the paths through the meadows and corn-fields as we proceed homeward. Conspicuous among them are the Centaury, with its elegant cluster of small, pink, star-like flowers; the Ladies' Bed-straw, with its rich yellow tufts; the Meadow-sweet--sweetest of all the sweeteners of the Meadows; the Wood Betony, lifting up its handsome head of rose-coloured blossoms; and, still in full perfection, and towering up from among the low groundlings that usually surround it, the stately Fox-glove.
Among the other plants that now become conspicuous, the Wild Teasal must not be forgotten, if it be only on account of the use that one of the Summer's prettiest denizens sometimes makes of it. The Wild Teasal (which now puts on as much the appearance of a flower as its rugged nature will let it) is that species of thistle which shoots up a strong serrated stem, straight as an arrow, and beset on all sides by hard sharp-pointed thorns, and bearing on its summit a hollow egg-shaped head, also covered at all points with the same armour of threatening thorns--as hard, as thickly set, and as sharp as a porcupine's quills. Often within this fortress, impregnable to birds, bees, and even to mischievous boys themselves, that beautiful Moth which flutters about so gaily during the first weeks of Summer, on snow-white wings spotted all over with black and yellow, takes up its final abode,--retiring thither when weary of its desultory wanderings, and after having prepared for the perpetuation of its ephemeral race, sleeping itself to death, to the rocking lullaby of the breeze.