hitherto lying in fancied security, warned them that the enemy was at hand, and enabled them, instantly standing to their arms, to take their foes at such disadvantage that the fierce Norsemen were totally routed and driven to their ships with immense slaughter. The thistle that thus opportunely prevented the Scots being taken unawares is still pointed out, not, however, as being any of the large, formidable, long-stemmed varieties, but the stemless thistle that spreads out its leaves and spikes quite close to the ground, common enough in old pastures and waste grass lands. The stemless thistle is botanically known as the Cnicus acaulis, and lowly and unpretending as it may seem at first sight, there is, we make bold to assert, no species of thistle so well entitled to bear and boast the grand old legend, Nemo me impune lacessit. Its spines are as fine, and quite as tough and piercing withal, as the finest cambric needle; impossible, too, of extraction, once it has fairly penetrated the flesh, except by a surgical operation; and we have a shrewd suspicion that it is to some extent poisonous, for, from the moment one pierces the flesh till its expulsion by suppuration of the part, the pain is keen and excruciating beyond conception. Barefooted Dane, Saxon, or Celt, unexpectedly treading on a nearly ripe and full-formed Cnicus, might well be excused an oath, however lusty and loud, in acknowledgment and hearty execration of such an impediment. We can say something of a Cnicus spike wound from personal experience. Several years ago, when we were younger and lighter than we are to-day, we were vaulting over a wall that divided an infield of corn from an outfield of old pasture. Safely over, but alighting awkwardly, we slipped forward and fell, instinctively stretching out our hands to secure ourselves as we came almost headlong to the ground. The fall was nothing, but one of our hands had, as ill-luck would have it, alighted, with all our weight upon it, in the very bosom of a full-armed, irate Cnicus. The palm of the hand somehow escaped, but one of the prickles entered our wrist, and the pain was at once intense--stinging, sharp, and burning, as if the spike was the point of a red-hot needle from the fire. It could not be extracted, for it could not be seen; and there was nothing for it but patience and such local applications as might best aid the inevitable suppuration by which alone, after fourteen days' acute pain, relief was finally obtained. Upon the whole, then, and keeping the barefooted Danish scout tradition in view, we are disposed to consider the stemless Cnicus as the true national emblem. If there be any doubt, the honour, at all events, must be left between itself and the burly, big-stemmed Marianus. Of a certainty, in any case, the cotton thistle (Onopordon acanthium), though frequently spoken of by horticulturists and amateur gardeners as the Scotch thistle, cannot be the species