Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/375

241 elegant, yet so wild and free. Frequently its fine large leaves hang in a curtain or drapery of verdure over the ragged hedgerow, or spring in festoons from tree to tree, with myriads of the purely white tent-shaped bells lying on the foliage in wreaths of the most graceful and fanciful forms. The leaves are far more beautiful in shape than the cultivated ones, being arrowy instead of round; and the calyx is also more ornamental. Like most wild flowers, when gathered, they quickly fade, though when immediately placed in water, I have had yards of the chaplet tendrils last several days in great freshness and beauty.

Most persons have some sort of acquaintance with the family, and divers are the feelings with which its members are regarded. When seized by fair cullers of wild buds, albeit with well gloved hands, the sturdy mountaineer generally leaves a few sharp spines behind him, to remind the assailing fingers he may not be attacked with impunity; and this very natural self-defence gains him the character of a rough pugnacious personage, not fit for gentle company. The agriculturist considers him as an intrusive "ne'er do weel," whose acquaintance he is especially desirous to cut altogether. The Naturalist and the Poet—and the terms ought to be synonymous, for the true source of all their inspiration is the same—spend many an hour in examining the curious and beautiful arrangement of the seeds, and their gradually developed wings of delicate downy filaments, which, when ripe and expanded, fly away with the tiny germs of the