I will next instance the "perfoliates," plants not confined to any one order, but alike in having a stem which passes midway through the leaf or pair of leaves, a most engaging curiosity of structure. It is by this peculiarity that the yellow-wort, a gentian with glaucous foliage and blossoms like "patines of bright gold," mainly wins its popularity. But the quaintest of perfoliates is the hare's-ear, or "thorow-wax," as it used to be called, of which, as Gerarde wrote, "every branch grows thorow every leaf, making them like hollow cups or saucers." The thorow-wax owes its attractiveness to these singular glaucous leaves, which might be compared with an artist's palette; in some measure, also, to the sharp-pointed bracts by which the minute yellow flowers are enfolded--features that lend it a distinction which many much more beautiful plants do not possess. From no catalogue of quaint plants could the butterwort be omitted. "Mountain-sanicle" was its old name; and all climbers are acquainted with it, as it studs the wet rocks on the lower hillsides with pale green or yellowish leaves like starfish on a seashore. Its flowering-season is short, but full of interest, for lo! from its centre there rise in June one or two long and dainty stems, each bearing at its extremity a drooping purple flower that might at first glance be taken for a violet--a violet springing from a starfish! It is a long step from these conspicuous examples of the quaint to the small and modest moschatel, a hedge-flower which is likely to go unobserved unless it be made a special object of inquiry. _Adoxa_, "the unknown to fame," is its Greek title; but if it has little claim to beauty in the ordinary sense, there is no slight charm in its delicate configuration, and in the whimsical arrangement of its five slender flower-heads--a terminal one, facing upwards, supported by four lateral ones, with a resemblance to the faces of a clock; whence its not inappropriate nickname, "the clock-tower." A fairy-like little belfry it is, whose chimes must be listened for, if at all, in the early spring, for it hastens to get its flowering finished before it is overgrown by the rank herbage of the roadside. There are many other flowers that might claim a place in this chapter, such as the sundews and the bladderworts; the mimulus and ground pine; the samphire and sea-rocket; the mullein and the teazle; and not least, the herb Paris, with that large quadruple "love-knot" into which its leaves are fashioned. But it must suffice to speak of one more.