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Her two tiny eggs have since been safely hatched and the young birds reared; now the nest is empty, a prize to be taken and preserved for future study and admiration. At the foot of a figwort stalk in the pasture, shielded by a little sprig of choke-cherry and a wisp of grasses, a new nest is being builded. That is why the chewink sings so happily from dawn till dark.

Watching her catch an insect on the way, I hear the sharp snap of her bill, as if two pebbles had been smartly struck together. Fanning the air with gauzy wings, the honey bee comes for a feast on the flowers of the figwort. Visiting every open blossom, he loads up with the honey and departs in a line for his hive.

In a moment he was with her again, and she stepped into the wet punt. 'It'll float us all right, he said, and manoeuvred again to the island. They landed under a willow tree. She shrank from the little jungle of rank plants before her, evil-smelling figwort and hemlock. But he explored into it. 'I shall mow this down, he said, 'and then it will be romantic like Paul et Virginie.

Without those early spring rains the wild flowers cannot push their roots and develop their stalks in time for the summer sun. The sunshine and heat finds them unprepared. In the ditches the square-stemmed figwort is conspicuous by its dark green. It is very plentiful about Surbiton.

They made tea sometimes of the tormentil, whose little yellow flowers appear along the furrows. The leaves of the square-stemmed figwort, which they called 'cresset' or 'cressil, were occasionally placed on a sore; and the yarrow locally 'yarra' was yet held in estimation as a salve or ointment.

A common plant in moist places, the figwort, bears small velvety flowers, much the colour of the red velvet topknot of the goldfinch, the yellow on whose wings is like the yellow bloom of the furze which he frequents in the winter, perching cleverly on its prickly extremities.

SCROPHULARIA nodosa. KNOTTY FIGWORT. Herb. D. The roots are of a white colour, full of little knobs or protuberances on the surface: this appearance gained it formerly some repute against scrophulous disorders and the piles; and from hence it received its name: but modern practitioners expect no such virtues from it. It has a faint unpleasant smell, and a somewhat bitter disagreeable taste.

I think I would rather use it than the tobacco juice which the mowers and reapers are now so fond of applying to the cuts they frequently get. They appear to have quite forsaken the ancient herbal remedies, as the sickle-herb, knotted figwort, and so on. Tobacco juice does not seem a nice thing for a bleeding wound; probably it gets well rather in spite of it than because of it.

Country children, and indeed older folk, call the foliage of the knotted figwort cutfinger leaves, as they are believed to assist the cure of a cut or sore. Raspberry suckers shoot up in one part of the copse; the fruit is doubtless eaten by the birds.

In the roadside ditch by the furze the figwort grows, easily known by its coarse square stem; and the woody bines, if so they may be called, or stalks of bitter-sweet, remain all the winter standing in the hawthorn hedge.