Yes.  I have got them all now.

Not so hasty, child; there is plenty of a beautiful fern growing among that moss, which you have passed over.  Look here.

What! that little thing a fern!

Hold it up to the light, and see.

What a lovely little thing, like a transparent sea-weed, hung on black wire.  What is it?

Film fern, Hymenophyllum.  But what are you staring at now, with all your eyes?

Oh! that rock covered with green stars and a cloud of little white and pink flowers growing out of them.

Aha! my good little dog!  I thought you would stand to that game when you found it.

What is it, though?

You must answer that yourself.  You have seen it a hundred times before.

Why, it is London Pride, that grows in the garden at home.

Of course it is:  but the Irish call it St. Patrick’s cabbage; though it got here a long time before St. Patrick; and St. Patrick must have been very short of garden-stuff if he ever ate it.

But how did it get here from London?

No, no.  How did it get to London from hence?  For from this country it came.  I suppose the English brought it home in Queen Bess’s or James the First’s time.

But if it is wild here, and will grow so well in England, why do we not find it wild in England too?

For the same reason that there are no toads or snakes in Ireland.  They had not got as far as Ireland before Ireland was parted off from England.  And St. Patrick’s cabbage, and a good many other plants, had not got as far as England.

But why?

Why, I don’t know.  But this I know:  that when Madam How makes a new sort of plant or animal, she starts it in one single place, and leaves it to take care of itself and earn its own living—­as she does you and me and every one—­and spread from that place all round as far as it can go.  So St. Patrick’s cabbage got into this south-west of Ireland, long, long ago; and was such a brave sturdy little plant, that it clambered up to the top of the highest mountains, and over all the rocks.  But when it got to the rich lowlands to the eastward, in county Cork, it found all the ground taken up already with other plants; and as they had enough to do to live themselves, they would not let St. Patrick’s cabbage settle among them; and it had to be content with living here in the far-west—­and, what was very sad, had no means of sending word to its brothers and sisters in the Pyrenees how it was getting on.

What do you mean?  Are you making fun of me?

Not the least.  I am only telling you a very strange story, which is literally true.  Come, and sit down on this bench.  You can’t catch that great butterfly, he is too strong on the wing for you.

But oh, what a beautiful one!

Yes, orange and black, silver and green, a glorious creature.  But you may see him at home sometimes:  that plant close to you, you cannot see at home.