SOME BOCKING FLOWERS. 43
natural powers in the plants. Another name for Bonus is Allgood,
distinguishing him from Littlegood, the Sun Spurge,
The heavenly blue of Wild Succory, too, has disappeared
from among us, though I can still get plenty in farm-chaseways
at Panfield and Rayne. Rhinanthus Crista-galli, "nose-flowered
cockscomb," used to rattle me to sleep from a meadow over the
road until Dr. Hatton built his house there, and now her yellow
cock's-comb rattles no more.
Against these losses Canadian Fleabane, whose air-craft are
rapidly being wind-blown outwards from London, seems a
wretched substitute. And yet, the beauty of her minute florets
is marvellous and the extraordinary variations of the plant are
well worth study. In cornfields and waste ground she sends up
a rich abundance of growth near two feet high, and illustrates
what useful "stuffing" she made four centuries ago when her
ancestors came over in crates from our daughter Dominion.
Against the east front of Courtaulds' Mill, in an invisible hair-
crack between a new concrete path and a modern brick wall, she
ekes out a precarious livelihood with but half-a-dozen heads and
seven inches of attenuated growth like emaciated Groundsel. No
other plant has faced this bleak and inhospitable crevice, though
Pellitory-of-the-wall flourishes hard by.
Over our north-eastern border has crept the Shrubby
Hawkweed (Hieracium boreale), a poor name which I take from
Gibson, for there is nothing shrubby about her. Bentham calls
her Savoy Hawkweed" (H. Sabaudum) L. She is a tall hand-
some plant growing to three or four feet, with leaves all down the
stem and a bunch of daisy-like heads, which more resemble a
rag-wort than a hawkweed; but the snowballs of seed-heads
give the show away. Bentall reported "grows abundantly in
the woods round Halstead," and this is still true. A fine crop is
to be found on a bank in the lane beyond Rayne Hatch, near
to Lady Courtauld's residence "Pennypot."
Rayne Hatch is far away from the parish of Rayne and is
a survival of the old days when Braintree was known as "Great
Reynes," and there was a hatch, or gateway into its woods;
compare Pilgrim's Hatch at Brentwood.
Near the Workhouse a patch of roadside waste, which has
been accidentally treated to a heavy dose of old mortar and