CRUCIFORM PLANTS, 319

ot this family, which, you see, are numerous and im-
portant. They both yield beef and mutton, and the
sauce to them. But many of this species are trouble-
some weeds. You see how yonder corn is overrun
with yellow flowers.

G. Yes. They are as thick as though they had
peen sown.

7. They are of this family, and called charlock, or
wud mustard, or corn kale, which, indeed, are not ah
exactly the same things, though nearly resembling.
These produce such plenty of seeds, that it is very
difficult to clear a field of them, if once they are suf-
fered to grow till the seeds ripen. An extremely
common weed in gardens, ar! by road-sides, is shep-
herd’s purse, which is a very good specimen of the
pouch-bearing plants of this tribe, its seed-vessels
being exactly the figure of a heart. Lady-smock is
often so abundant a weed in wet meadows, as to
make them all over white with its flowers. Some call
this plant cuckoo-flower, because its flowering is about
the same time with the first appearance of that bird in
the spring.

G. IL remember some pretty lines in a song about
spring, in which lady-smock is mentioned.

‘* When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks, all silver white ;
And cuckoo-buds, of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight.”

Z. ‘They are Shakespeare’s. You see, he gives the
name of cuckoo-bud to some other flower, a yellow one,
which appears at the same season. But still earlier
than this time, walls and hedge-banks are enlivened
by a very small white flower, called whitlew-grass,
which is one of this tribe.

f. Is it easy to distinguish the plants of this family
from one another ?

7. Not very easy, for the general similarity of tne
flowers 18 so great, that little distinction can be drawn
from them. The marks of the species are chiefly taken