"What is that?" they said, as they saw something that looked curious but
not pretty.

"That is one of the sketches I took in Cornwall two or three miles from
the Land's End. It is a poor, unhappy furze-bush, covered with dodder.
The dodder is what is called a parasitical plant; that is, a plant that
lives entirely on another. There are several kinds of dodders: some live
entirely on flax, some on nettles, but those that stick to clover and
furze-bushes are the most common in this country.

"When the seed of a dodder dropped into the ground begins to grow, it
feels about for the kind of plant it wants to live upon: if it cannot
find it, it dies.

"This furze dodder, you see, has found what it wanted, and, having done
so, began at once to coil its pink thread-like stem on that of the
furze. Now it had gained its footing, and threw out a great many more
fine stems in all directions, after the fashion of strawberry runners,
rooting as it grew. There are thousands of little dodder plants sucking
the life out of the furze. I have seen many of the bushes quite
smothered, and even killed, by this unpleasant and greedy plant.

"When you are older, if you study the ways of plants, you will find them
quite as interesting as those of animals. They have to get their living;
and some, like the dodder, prefer to get it at the expense of another;
and others resort to all kinds of plans to keep themselves and their
kinds alive.

"The acid of the pretty wood-sorrel is a poison, so nothing will eat it;
and the buttercups growing in meadows are untouched by cattle, because