the stem, lanceolate, deeply cut, and spiny, somewhat cottony beneath; heads of flowers cylindrical, nearly sessile, clustered; scales of the involucre erect; root annual. The stem of this Thistle is from two to four feet high, winged to its very summit with the bases of the prickly leaves. It grows near towns, or on sandy places, as dry heaths, but more especially near the sea. It is a very distinctly marked species, and bears small heads of pink flowers in June and July. The long erect scales of the involucre are a striking feature in this plant. 4. C. mariánus (Milk Thistle).-Leaves sessile, clasping, waved, thorny, those of the root pinnatifid; scales of the involucre somewhat leafy, bending backwards, and with thorny edges; root biennial. This very handsome, stately plant, the Virgin Mary's Thistle, is often cultivated in gardens for its beauty, but it is not commonly wild either in England or Scotland. It grows about Edinburgh, and on the rock of Dumbarton; and tradition tells that it was planted in the latter place by Mary Queen of Scots. The stout and stiff stem is from three to five feet high; and the rich deep-green leaves, veined with clear white, at once distinguish the plant from all others of the Thistle tribe. The flower, which appears in June and July, is large and of a rich purple colour. It is the handsomest of our native Thistles. The young leaves make an excellent salad, and are in some countries considered a great luxury; the tender stalks, laid in water to remove their bitterness, and peeled, are a good vegetable; the scales of the involucre are as good as artichokes; and in early spring the roots may also be boiled for the table. In Apulia, the whole plant is cultivated as fodder for cattle. 20. CNÍCUS (Plume Thistle). 1. C. lanceolatus (Spear Plume Thistle).-Heads of flowers large, mostly solitary, stalked, egg-shaped; scales of the involucre thorny, spreading, woolly; stem winged by the thorny leaves, the lobes of which are 2-cleft; root biennial. This is a very common Thistle on waste places and hedges, where grow "Insatiate thistles, tyrants of the plains, And lurid hemlock tinged with poisonous stains." Well may the plant be abundant, for the seeds float on the summer air in such profusion that the fields and lanes, for miles together, are whitened by these downy plumes, which are wafted onwards by the slightest breath of wind, gathering here and there in white masses, as some hedge or wide-spread trunk of a tree impedes their progress. Were it not that the goldfinches and chaffinches rob many of these plumes of the seed when they detach them from the Thistle top, and were it not that the autumnal rain destroys many, the whole land would be full of Plume Thistles. Even as it is, the wind carries off many a feathery seed to a kindly soil, and the farmer finds his fields encumbered with the produce of the neighbouring hedge-bank. It is troublesome on the land by its great size, yet it is not one of the worst of weeds, because, being a biennial plant, it may be extirpated if cut down early, before flowering. Nor is it a useless plant on the landscape. Dr. Withering remarks: "Few plants are more disregarded than this, yet its use is considerable. If a heap of clay be thrown up, nothing would grow upon it for several years, did not the seeds of this plant, wafted by the wind, fix and vegetate thereon. Under shelter of this, other vegetation appears, and the whole soon becomes fertile." The flowers, like those of the artichoke, and of several other Thistles, have the power of curdling milk. Neither sheep nor swine will touch this plant, and the horse and cow are not fond of it. It is often called Bur Thistle, and resembles the Scottish Thistle in the dull purple hue of its flowers. The immense number of seeds produced by all the Thistles renders them very troublesome to the farmer, by spreading them with great rapidity over a large extent of soil. Some years since, a Scotsman, who settled in Australia, having the strong feeling of nationality common to his countrymen, took to the land of his adoption the seeds of flowers which grew around his native home. He sowed the Thistle seed, and he was not the only one who had an abundant harvest of its plants. The fertile soil suited the intruder; and ever since, the Australian farmers have had to encounter as much difficulty in eradicating the Thistle as the English or Scotch cultivator of his native soil has. The steppe vegetation of the Pampas, near Buenos Ayres, has been overrun in the same way by introduced plants, and bears a most luxuriant growth of magnificent Thistles. A writer in a botanical work published by the Ray Society says, that in common with the horses and other domestic animals which, since the first colonization of these countries in the year 1535, have spread themselves widely over the steppes, European plants have also been introduced, and, " having completely supplanted the endemic vegetation over extensive tracts, have given the country, in many districts, from the Plata to the Cordilleras, its present natural character, in the same manner as the Opuntia and Agave tribe have become characteristics of the shores of the Mediterranean. In this region, where at the present time horses of European origin only exist, Darwin has discovered the remains of a fossil indigenous horse of the latest geological period; and exactly in the same way, together with an endemic Thistle, which covers extensive tracts of the Rio de la Plata, has the European Cardoon obtained possession of the soil over much wider districts. This lofty growth of Thistles is, on account of its extreme density, quite impenetrable by man or beast. Darwin is acquainted with no instance of an introduced plant occurring in such enormous quantity; and he found on prolonged land journeys the same growth frequently recurring: he even observed it beyond the Plata, and saw many square miles in Monte Video thickly covered with the same Thistle." 2. C. palústris (Marsh Plume Thistle).-Stem winged by the leaves, which are pinnatifid, spiny at the edges, and rough with prickles; involucres eggshaped, clustered; their scales pressed close, and having a sharp point; root biennial. This is remarkable for its clustered heads of flowers, and for being the tallest of all our wild Thistles. It grows on field-borders, especially such as are watered by a stream, or on spots where some ditch stagnates near at hand. In moist soils the plant will sometimes attain the height of ten feet, and even in dryer places the stout hollow stem reaches the height of four feet. The flowers expand in July and August; they are purplish lilac, and sometimes white, and grow on the branches at the summit of the stem. The leaves are very thorny, the thorns often tinged with brown; the tender stalks of the leaves may be eaten either raw or boiled. 3. C. arvensis (Creeping Plume Thistle).-Leaves spinous; involucre eggshaped, nearly smooth; its scales broadly lanceolate, closely pressed, terminating in a short spine; root creeping. In one form the leaves are sessile, pinnatifid, or very wavy; in another they are oblong, broad, and lobed, and run down the stem; and in a third they are flat, entire, or slightly lobed. This Thistle of our field-borders is more frequent than welcome, its creeping perennial root rendering it one of the most difficult to eradicate of all our native species; and its leaves are so prickly, that we might say with Chaucer,— VOL. II. "For thistels sharpe of many maners, I It is a handsome plant, about two feet high, its flowers, in July, forming clusters of a light purple colour, and of a sweet musky odour; and it is remarkable for bearing in the axils of its leaves galls, which are said to be powerfully astringent, and to be useful in cases of hæmorrhage. The trouble which this thistle causes to the agriculturist induced our fathers to call it the Cursed Thistle, and truly it requires no small care and industry to keep it within bounds. It is generally found in dry, loamy soils, seldom occurring in any quantity in sand or gravel. A case is recorded in the Farmers' Magazine in which the descending roots of the plant were dug out of the quarry, and were nineteen feet long: nor are the horizontal roots of less amount. Mr. Curtis planted once, in April, about two inches of the root of this Thistle, in his garden. By the following November, it had thrown out stolons all around, several of them being eight feet long, and some sending up leaves five feet from the original root. The whole having been taken up, as it was supposed, and washed, was found to weigh four pounds. But it was not yet eradicated, for next spring it appeared again, nearly about the same spot; and between fifty and sixty young plants appeared from the fragments of the root which had been left in the soil, notwithstanding all the efforts of the gardener to exterminate them. On some ill-cultivated arable lands this Thistle often forms half the produce, when they afford ample employment to weeders, who, supplied with strong gloves and pincers, busy themselves in spring in striving to banish it from the soil. Some English botanists doubt if cows and horses will eat it, but Mr. Loudon remarks on this subject: "Those who know anything of the history of agriculture in Scotland before the introduction of turnips, will recollect that it formed the suppering of housed cattle during five or six weeks of every summer." The ashes of this plant yield a very pure vegetable salt; and another plant of the same genus, C. oleraceus, which is said to have been gathered wild in Lincolnshire, has fleshy roots like the skirret, that may be boiled for the table. It was found in 1823 in this country, but is not a native plant. It is much eaten by the Russians, who boil the leaves in spring, as the Siberians do both the leaves and roots of various species. This Creeping Thistle is sometimes called Horse Thistle. Like the other kinds, it has an abundance of seeds, and Spenser might have been watching its plumes when he wrote the comparison— "Els as a thistle-doune in the ayre doth float, So vainly shalt thou to and fro be tost;" but an inspired poet had anticipated the comparison: for Isaiah spoke of "the rolling thing before the whirlwind;" which learned commentators say should be, "the thistle-down before the whirlwind." Children pick the thistle-plumes for filling cushions; and though it is a tedious process, yet sometimes the thoughts of making a pillow for some one who is poor or sick helps to perseverance, and the employment may be made to awaken kindness and sympathy, as well as to prompt to active exercise in the open air. The plant has prickly leaves, and merits its name, if Wachter's account of the origin of the word "thistle be The Anglo-Saxon thistle he thinks may have been thyd-sel, from the verb thyd-an, to prick. The Dutch and Germans call the plant Distel; and the Danes, Tidsel. In France it is called Chardon, and in Italy Cardo. true. 4. C. eriophorus (Woolly-headed Plume Thistle).—Leaves half-clasping, but not forming a wing down the stem, white and cottony beneath, deeply pinnatifid, the lobes two cleft, the segments pointing alternately upwards and downwards, and each terminated by a strong spine; involucres very large, globose, woolly; the scales with a long spinous point turning downwards; roots biennial. This species is distinguished from the others by the very thick down which clothes the |