There is, however, something curious about this butterbur. It is related to the coltsfoot of the arable fields, and the coltsfoot sends up a stalk without a leaf, and flowers before any green appears. So, too, the butterbur of the river flowers before its great leaf comes. Nothing is really common either, for everything is so local that you may spend years, and in fact a lifetime, in a district and never see a flower plentiful enough in another. Just where I am staying now the pennywort grows on every wall attached to the mortar between the cobbles. In some places you may search the roads in vain for this little plant, which has this merit, that its rounded leaf presents a fresh green in February. It does not die away, it appears as green as spring, and pieces of the wall are ornamented with it as thickly as the iron-headed nails in old doors. One plant grows out of the hard stem of a hawthorn tree, as if it were a parasite like the mistletoe; probably there is some crack which the plant itself has hidden. If every plant and every flower were found in all places the charm of locality would not exist. Everything varies, and that gives the interest. These purplish stones, where they lie in the water, seem to have a kind of growth upon them--small knobs on the surface. On examination each small roughness or knob will be found composed of a number of very minute fragments of stone. It is a sort of cell, probably built by a species of caddis. There was hardly a stone in the rivers that was not dotted with these little habitations, so that it seemed difficult to overlook them; but upon showing one to a mighty hunter to know the local name, he declared he had never noticed it before, and added that he did not care for such little things. It is of such little things that great nature is made.