ire district, looking from a distance as if the
land had been sunk in an ocean of milk, no one who is not familiarly
acquainted with every yard of ground could make his way over the fields
without falling into the watery boundaries which surround them.

Some of them, however, are distinguished by hawthorns, which take the
place of the willows, and thrive so luxuriantly that they may lay claim
to the title of forest trees. Blackberries, too, are exuberant in their
growth, and in many spots the hawthorn and blackberry on opposite sides
of the brook have intertwined their branches across it and have
completely hidden the water from sight. On these blackberries, the fruit
of which was in its green state, the drone-flies and hawk-flies simply
swarmed, telling the naturalist of their multitudinous successors, who
at present are in the preliminary stages of their existence.

Among the blackberries the scarlet fruit of the woody nightshade (a
first cousin of the potato) hung in tempting clusters, and I could not
help wondering whether they would endanger the health of the young
Minsterians.

In some places the common frog-bit had grown with such luxuriance that
it had completely hidden the water, the leaves overlapping each other as
if the overcrowded plants were trying to shoulder each other out of the
way.

In most of these streamlets the conspicuous bur-reed (_Sparganium
ramosum_) grew thickly, its singular fruit being here and there visible
among the sword-like leaves. I cannot but think that the mediaeval weapon
called the "morning star" (or "morgen-stern") was derived from the
globular, spiked fruit-cluster of the bur-reed.

A few of the streams were full of the fine plant which is popularly
known by the name of bull-rush, or bulrush (_Typha latifolia_), but
which ought by rights to be called the "cat's-tail" or "reed-mace." Of
this plant it is said that a little girl, on seeing it growing,
exclaimed that she never knew before that sausages grew on sticks. The
teasel (_Dipsacus_) was abundant, as were also several of the true
thistles.

In some places one of these streams becomes too deep for the bur-reed,
and its surface is only diversified by the half-floating leaves of one
or two aquatic plants.

On approaching one of these places, I find the water to be apparently
without inmates. They had only been alarmed by my approach, which, as I
had but little time to spare, was not as cautious as it ought to have
been.