[7: Song the eleventh, p. 171, facing which is a map of Cheshire, showing the rivers, out of every one of which rises a sort of tutelary nymph, in design droll beyond imagination.--_Vide_ the Chetham Library copy.] [8: On her left breast, A mole, cinque-spotted, like the _crimson_ drops I' the bottom of a cowslip.] [9: This noted Cheshire river rises upon Buckley Heath, near Malpas, going thence past Nantwich and Winsford. At Northwich it joins the Dane; soon afterwards there is confluence with the Peover, the united waters eventually entering the Mersey, not far from Frodsham.] [10: In addition to the meres already mentioned, there are Pickmere, Rudworth Mere, Flaxmere, Doddington Mere, Combermere, and several others.] [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. CARRINGTON MOSS. "Will you walk into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly: "'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy." OLD SONG. Should any of our unknown companions in these rambles be vegetarians, they will please here take notice that Carrington Moss is in the summer-time a scene of ravenous slaughter such as cannot but be exceedingly painful and shocking to them. It will appear the more repulsive from the high character for innocence ordinarily borne by the destroyers, who are the last beings in the world we should expect to find indulging in personal cruelty, much less acting the part of perfidious sirens. Having given this warning, our friends will of course have only themselves to blame should they persist in following us to the spectacle we are about to describe; and now it only remains to say that the perpetrators of the deeds alluded to are _plants_! People are apt to look upon plants simply as things that just grow up quietly and inoffensively, open their flowers, love the rain, in due time ripen their seeds, then wither and depart, leaving no more to be recorded of their life and actions than comes of the brief span of the little babe that melts unweaned from its mother's arms. This is quite to mistake their nature. So far from being uniform, and unmarked by anything active, the lives of plants are full from beginning to end of the most curious and diversified phenomena. Not that they act knowingly, exercising consciousness and volition,--this has been the dream only of a few enthusiasts,--but taking one plant with another, the history of vegetable life is quite a romance, and scarcely inferior in wonderful circumstance to that of animals. So close is the general resemblance of plants to animals, as regards the vital processes and phenomena, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to point out a single fact in connection with the one that has not a counterpart, more or less exact, among the other. The animal world is a repetition in finer workmanship of the vegetable. As for harmlessness and inoffensiveness in plants, these are the very last qualities to be ascribed to them. Pleasant are fragrant flowers, and sweet fruits,