The little spring here gushes up and then sweeps away along a stony bed overgrown with brakes and tares. On its margin, amid a tangle of wild blackberry, I have come upon a forest of scouring-rush
It is a quaint growth. I love to put my face close to the earth and, looking through the rushes’ green stems, to fancy myself a wee brownie, wandering among adense wilderness of pines. The development of the miniature trees is an interesting processFirst the ground is covered with slender brown fingersthrusting up through the soil. These grow rapidly, and in a few days spread out their brief, verticillate branches to the breeze, as proudly as any great tree might do. Here is a tiny finger just pointing upward; yonder towers the giant of the lilliputian forest, fullyhalf-a-foot high. “Scouring-weed,” says the farmer, contemptuously, “they aint no good. Some call ’em horsetail.”