Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/45

Rh knowledge; as the most commonplace of mortals becomes interesting to average humanity if it is whispered about that he is fourth cousin to the king. The world is not yet so democratic that anything, even a plant, can be rated altogether by itself.

The gravelly banks of the railroad, on which I go dry-shod through the swamp, are covered with a forest of chicory; a thrifty immigrant, tall, coarse, scraggy, awkward, homely, anything you will, but a great brightener of our American waysides on sunny midsummer forenoons. It attracts much notice, and presumably gives much pleasure, to judge by the number of persons who ask me its name. May the town fathers spare it! The bees and the goldfinches will thank them, if nobody else. Here I am interested to see that a goodly number of the plants—but not more than one in fifty, perhaps—bear full crops of pure white flowers; a rarity to me, though I am well used to pink ones. Gray's Man [sic] ual, by the by, a Cambridge book, makes no mention of white flowers, while Britton and Brown's Illustrated Flora says nothing about