Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/121

102 the popular name of "old man's beard," as its twin sister of England and Ireland, where the field mice pull the feathered awns as soft linings for their nests. Of Violets, there is the large blue Betony-leaved (Viola betonicifolia) not certainly "stealing and giving odour," but playing the very mischief with us as it brings back to our mind's eye the groups of white and blue sweet-scented flowers well nigh hidden in their dense leafiness which tempted us to wander abroad in the fields and hedgerows of England, ere the chilliness of winter had disappeared. The green and scarlet native Fuschias may be gathered here, the Sida pulchella, Indigofera sylvatica, the cream-colored Stackhousia monogyna, with many of the Geraniaceæ. Turning aside to get a better and fuller view of the falls, which with the stream swollen by the late floods are grander and more impressive than usual, we observe the Ladies Bedstraw, Eurybiopsis, Cotula, so frequent by every wall and roadside, and of Goodeniaceæ, many species, which will be the better recognised, if the large leaved bushy one with ovate-dentate leaves and yellow flowers which is overhanging the stream, is first carefully examined, as it is one of the most conspicuous of the tribe. To embody here any idea of the many gems to be collected in this locality would be but tedious, but there are some rivalling the choicest plants of which our green-houses at home can boast, and all to the very tiniest, forming an important link in the Vegetable Kingdom; and as for Ferns,—not a dark or sheltered nook is without them. Well has Christopher North said, that "Nature does not spread in vain her flowers in flush and fragrance over every