The Amberley Wild Brooks possess this great merit, that in addition to most of the aquatics and dike-land plants above-mentioned, they present a fine display of the tall riverside flowers. Their wet hollows that teem with frog-bit, arrow-head, water-parsnip, water-plantain, yellow cress, glaucous stitchwort, and other choice things, are fringed here and there with purple loosestrife, and with marsh-woundwort almost equal to the loosestrife in size and colour; and mingling with these in like luxuriance are yellow loosestrife, tansy, toadflax, and water-ragwort--a brilliant combination of purple flowers and gold. Then, as if the better to set off this spectacle, there is in some places a background of staid and massive herbs like the great water-dock, And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothe the dazzled eye with sober sheen.[3] One would fear that this wealth of diverse hues might even become embarrassing, were it not that the heart of the flower-lover is insatiable. [Footnote 3: From Shelley's short lyric, "The Question," perhaps the most beautiful flower-poem in the language.] IV LIKENESSES THAT BAFFLE Stay, stand apart; I know not which is which. _The Comedy of Errors._ ONE of the first difficulties by which those who would learn their native flora are beset is the likeness which in some cases exists between one plant and another--not the close resemblance of kindred species, such as that found, for instance, among the brambles or the hawkweeds, which is necessarily a matter for expert discrimination, but the superficial yet often puzzling similarity in what botanists call the "habit" of wildflowers. Thus the horse-shoe vetch may easily be mistaken, by a beginner, for the bird's-foot trefoil, or the field mouse-ear chickweed for the greater stitchwort; and the differences between the dove's-foot crane's-bill and the less common _geranium pusillum_ are not at first sight very apparent. Distinguishing features instantly recognized by an expert, who has taken, so to speak, finger-tip impressions of the plants, do not readily present themselves to the layman, whose only guide is the general testimony of structure, colour, and height.