plant, which I grew on the steeper slopes of my grassy banks, must come in for a share of attention. This is the Ground Ivy (Nepeta glechoma), a species which is one of the Labiatce, the extensive order of plants with lip-shaped blossoms-of which the Pea blossom is perhaps one of the most familiar examples-and is no sort of relation of the Ivy proper, though its leaves have a not very distant resemblance to those of our familiar evergreen trailer. The Ground Ivy is a quick traveller, for its leaf-stems trail upon and creep along the ground and take root at their joints, whence also, above the rooting points, the flowering stems-six or seven or eight, or it may sometimes be eighteen, inches in length---arise, giving off in their turn the rounded, obtusely-lobed, hairy, and sometimes empurpled leaves and the purple, lip-shaped flowers, which are arranged in the form of a half-circle around the joints whence they take their origin. When upon a sunny bank, a rich glow of colour, red and purple, oftentimes overspreads the surface of stems and leaves. It is always easy to get up the roots of Nepeta glechoma with abundance of earth, and those I grew were not in the least prejudicially affected by the change from their wild bank to my garden wild. The little plant is reported to have been found in ninety-one botanical districts.

In few spaces of wild, grassy sward need one look in

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vain for the pretty, golden flowers of the Tormentil (Potentilla tormentilla), so much like, at first sight, and oftentimes, doubtless, mistaken for, Buttercups in miniature. But, apart from the smaller size of the blossoms, the petals of the Tormentil are ordinarily four in number, each laterally separated from the other and broadly heart-shaped, whilst the Buttercup petals are in number five, and overlap to form the cup.' The leaves of the Tormentil have no foot-stalks, and consist of from three to five, though usually three, leaflets, which are oblong, wedge-shaped, and deeply cut or serrated.

Very much like the Tormentil, only larger in leafstem and blossom, is the Common Creeping Cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans). As its name indicates, its leaves are five-cleft, and each leaflet of the five is oblong or wedge-shaped and deeply serrated. The flowers, besides being larger than those of the Tormentil, have five instead of four petals. But the shape of these is similar in both plants. With their little clumps of grass roots I took up many of either species for my garden wild. These indeed, with my Buttercups and Daisies, I grew in greater abundance than any other of my flowers in the levels of my spaces of grassy sward, and for the reason that, when my Buttercups had ceased to flower in the summer's prime, my Tormentils

and Cinquefoils went on blooming into gold right into the latest month of summer, and oftentimes far into the autumn. The Tormentil is found in not less than ninety-nine botanical districts, and the Creeping Cinquefoil in not less than seventy-eight.

I had almost forgotten my Clovers, of which I grew two kinds, the Common Red or Purple Clover (Trifolium pratense), and the White Clover (Trifolium repens). I am sure I need not describe them, because they are the 'commonest' of all the pretty, three-leaved fraternity or sisterhood, each having been recorded in a hundred and three districts; and those who know Grass when they see it also know Clover, which comes everywhere, often unbidden.

My chapter on my flowery grass banks must end here, because I have already enumerated the principal flowers I grew upon them. But I grew others there, of which anon I shall give some account.

IX.

A GARDEN GREEN LANE.

IN the prime of leafy summer few things are more delightful than a saunter through a green lane-a genuine green lane where vegetation grows free and wild; where the pathway is invaded by wild flowers, leaving at most, in the centre, a narrow passage for the pedestrian; and where high banks, on either hand, occasionally close in,' and foliage, overarching, shuts out the sunshine. If in wild country, where, though rocks abound, the soil is rich in every intervening earthy space, and moisture is induced by many streams, the 'green lane' is a natural paradise, revealing to the explorer, where it winds through the narrowest gorge of a valley, a wild beauty which is oftentimes enchanting-high soft banks on one side, perhaps clothed with a profusion of wild vegetation; rocks on the other side, it may be soft slate rock or red sandstone, not bare and sterile, but half hidden by moss, ivy, and ferns. I can recall to my recollection many such lanes through