But to return to our daisy. Observe how, by its organs, it yields itself—in anticipation, as it were—to its fate. And, first, its long and fibrous roots anchor it so solidly in the soil that the cattle which browse it cannot tear it up. Next, its stem is so short that it seems to be blended with the roots; one might almost doubt whether any existed. But, if you look at it more closely, you may readily assure yourself that the stem is the point whence issue the recumbent branches which bear the leaves. Why does not the daisy boast of stems erect and free? Would they not be incessantly bent or broken by the merry troops of children who love to play and dance upon Nature's carpet, the soft green sward?

The leaves of our daisy, then, seem to issue directly from the roots, without the intermediary of an apparent stem, which must not be confounded—recollect this, dear reader!—with the stalk or peduncle that bears the crown of petals. These leaves in form resemble tiny crenelated spatules, with the handles flattened, and the edges trimmed with little hairs or fibres. The peduncle, too, seems to start immediately from the roots. The principal part of the peduncle is surmounted, as already hinted, by the flower, to which we next direct our inquisitive and searching gaze.

What shall we call it? To what shall we liken it? To a gilded button framed in a pearl. This button, this "yellow eye," as Tabernæmontanus, a botanist of the sixteenth century, named it,—the "eye of day" of our old poets,—a drop of gold in a rim of silver,—is not like any other flower; is quite a world or system of Lilliputian blossoms, each of which is represented by a miniature tube, yellow at the summit, and of a greenish white at the base,—the said tube being the union, or combination, of the tops or summits forming the central gem, the gilded button, the drop of gold. You may readily note this arrangement in the larger variety of daisy, the Chrysanthemum leucanthum of Linnæus,—two Latinised Greek words which signify, literally, "golden-blossomed white flower."

If you doubt whether each of these tiny tubes be a flower, you have only to analyse them with the assistance of your ever-useful lens. The analysis of one will suffice; for all the others resemble it. Now, with your penknife, split the tube throughout its entire length: you will thus lay bare all the parts which enter into the composition of a veritable flower, commencing with the most conspicuous. Through the magnifying glass you can see five stamens,—free as regards their short filaments, but united by their elongated anthers; a characteristic which gives name to the great family of the Synantheraceæ, of which family our daisy is an honoured member;—a bifid (i.e., cloven in two) style traversing the middle of the anthers, which form for it a kind of sheath (see Fig. 31, a);—a monopetalous, tubular, and obscurely bilabiated (two-lipped) corolla, inserted at the summit of an unilocular (one-lobed) ovary, which is attached to the calyx (see Fig. 31, b). In these tiny flowers, then, which we call in Latin flosculi, in French fleurons, in English florets, nothing is deficient. As they are shaped like tubes, we call them, by way of distinction, tubulifloral.

But what are these white rays, lightly shaded with pink, which enclose or encircle the florets? (See Fig. 32, a.) Examine them at their points of insertion. You will perceive there some traces of reproductive organs, among which the style is most prominent. As for the corolla, it is represented only by its brown lip, which is immeasurably developed. It is this exaggerated development which constitutes the white rays, or petals, that prove so attractive to the eye. (See Fig. 32, b.) Do not forget to observe, by the way, that they are rose-tinted only on the side which directly undergoes the action of the light. To distinguish them from the tubular florets,—the tubulifloræ,—these "white rays" have been called ligulate florets, or ligulifloræ.

The complete flowers (or the florets) and the rays (or partially abortive flowers) form, in their aggregate, what our botanists have agreed to call an inflorescence of the capitula. Disposed quincuncially on an ovoid receptacle, or phoranth, both are grouped (Fig. 32, c) in alternating rows.

To explain thoroughly this species of inflorescence, we will venture upon an hypothesis. Let us suppose that we could elongate the said ovoid receptacle as if it were a ball of wax,—it would be changed into a sheath-like inflorescence; all our smaller florets, whose union composes what is improperly called the flower of the daisy, would be ranged around an elongated, instead of being placed upon a flattened axis. This axis characterises all the Synantheraceæ of the family of the Compositæ (a sub-order); sometimes naked, sometimes garnished with varied hairs, either shrunken or persistent, it has furnished several characters useful in the classification of genera and species. But possessed with a mania for complicating everything, botanists designate it indifferently receptacle, phoranthe, clinanthe, etc. Why not employ one and the same word to distinguish one and the same thing? Why not have preserved the name axis, and have attached to it such qualifying terms as might be necessary to indicate simple differences of forms?

The ancients looked upon nature,—I cannot sufficiently insist upon this theme,—with quite other eyes than we do. The study and description of characters, so indispensable to our classifications and nomenclatures, appeared to them a useless labour; they had not even an idea of its value. But it was of signal importance to them to investigate the virtues and properties of plants, so far as they might be rendered available for the preservation of health and the cure of disease.

Our daisy is common in Greece. Theophrastus, therefore, ought to have known it, though he does not refer to it. It is common also in the plains of Italy. Pliny was the first to describe it, under the name of bellis; he attributes to it the properties of the St John's wort.[44] And it is noteworthy that the daisy belongs to the same family as the latter; a circumstance certainly not known in the days of Pliny.

The botanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are by no means niggards in the eulogiums which they lavish on the medicinal properties of our graceful Synantheracea. Bock (better known, perhaps, under the name of Tragus, a Goat), who mistook the yellow anthers for the seeds, recommended the leaves of the Gänzeblume (goose-flower, as he called it) as a laxative. Tabernæmontanus prescribed them as a remedy for cramps in the stomach and the spitting of blood.

Ray, who expresses his astonishment that the Greeks had not spoken of it, looked upon the daisy as an excellent vulnerary. "Externally," says he, "we employ it with success in the form either of a poultice or a fomentation; for internal treatment, we mix its juice with vulnerary potions."—These properties procured it the name of Consolida minor, which would make it the pendant of the larger Consolida, Symphytum officinale, a species of the Boraginaceæ, very common in damp and shady localities.

Ruel recommended cataplasms of daisies and cowslips for gout and scrofulous tumours. Chomel affirmed that he knew by experience that the flowers of the daisy and the herb robert[45] (Geranium Robertianum), if dried in a hot dish, and applied to the head, considerably relieved headache.[46]

Wepfer set great value on a mixture of daisy, cress, and rummularia in the treatment of pneumonia; and Michaelis assures us that he had cured dropsies by the use of the flowers of the daisy cooked as a broth.

Tournefort, who was very partial to this kind of observation,—now repudiated by our botanists,—says, that the daisy, taken as a warm drink or a decoction, quickens the blood when congealed by a very severe attack of cold, as happens in pneumonia; it removes obstructions, facilitates the circulation, and gives the fibres an opportunity of recovering their elasticity.[47]

Garidel sums up in the following words the result of his personal observations:—"I have frequently remarked that the juice of the daisy acts as a laxative, and even as a purgative; the decoction does not have that effect so often as Schroeder observes, who says that mothers frequently give the leaves as a gentle aperient to their children.... Care should be taken not to administer this remedy indifferently to all pleuretics, nor at any season; for if we give it when the expectoration is easy, we run the risk, by the employment of a laxative at a wrong time, of spoiling everything, and checking the expectoration. This I have seen occur in several cases, where the remedy had been administered by a hermit."[48]

Can it be true that the commonest plants are the most useful? Nature is quite capable of affording us these surprises; nature, who, by her shifting and proteiform movements, never ceases to laugh at human theories. But men, as was said long ago, have eyes, though not to see; and everybody also knows, from his own experience, that he has ears, not to understand!

However this may be, the daisy, which, as we have seen, was formerly so extolled for its officinal properties, is now-a-days completely ignored by physicians. What, then, are we to conclude? That all the remedies in vogue—melancholy to confess!—are an affair of fashion. When men shall have resumed perukes, and women abandoned chignons for furbelows, we shall remember, perhaps, the virtues of the lowly, tender daisy.

We cannot take leave of our favourite wild-flower without repeating Wordsworth's beautiful stanzas. He takes as his motto a fine passage from Wither, quaint old George Wither:—

On this hint our great meditative poet speaks, and speaks most tenderly and truly:—

We may add that we know but of four references to the daisy in Shakspeare. In Cymbeline, act iv., scene 2:—

In Love's Labour's Lost, act v., scene 2:—

Again, in Hamlet, act iv., scene 7:—

And, lastly, in Hamlet, act iv., scene 5:—

"There's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died."

In Milton there are but two allusions. In the Masque of Comus:—

And in L'Allegro:[50]—

The Tulip.

It is probable that, for the majority of floral amateurs, the name of the tulip is inseparable from a plant which, with the hyacinth and the lily, becomes, in the merry spring-time, the ornament of our gardens. Yet, towards the end of March, the observer will occasionally discover, in the woods and groves, the wild tulip,[51] the Tulipa sylvestris of Linnæus, which may, perhaps, be very properly taken for the type of a small tribe of the Liliaceæ. It is easily recognised by its flower, which resembles a large yellow campanula, slightly green on the exterior. Like all plants of the same family, it has but a single floral envelope or perianth, which may be either a corolla or a calyx as you will. The initiated protest and asseverate that it is a calyx; but the profanum vulgus, who compose the majority, will have it to be a corolla, on account of its colouring. To cut the knot, and please all parties, our beautiful floral envelope has been denominated a petaloid perianth.

The divisions of this perianth, six in number, may, in truth, be considered as petals; they are detached down to the base, and full in proportion as the pistil is developed. The latter is composed of three stigmata, attached, without the intermediary of a stylus (sessile stigmata), to a free ovary (that is, an ovary not joined to the perianth), which, as it develops, forms a capsule with three angular projections marking so many lobes; each of these lobes includes a great number of compressed seeds. As in all the Liliaceæ, and in many other vegetable families, the stamens, six in number, are hypogynous,—that is to say, inserted at the base of the division of the perianth. The stem, nearly two feet in height, bears a single flower only: the leaves are lanceolate, like all of the family, and the root is formed of a bulb, with thin and brownish-coloured external tunicæ.

Is the wild tulip an original species, or only a degenerate variety of the cultivated tulip (Tulipa Gesneriana)? The question is one not very easily solved.

It is generally admitted that the cultivated tulip,—which everybody knows,—was introduced into Europe from the East, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. It is, at all events, certain that none of our older botanists speak of our wild tulip. Dodonnée himself refers to the Eastern tulip only, of which he was the first to give, in his "Historia Stirpium," a tolerable delineation.

A circumstance which would favour the belief that the tulip was imported from the East is the Oriental derivation of its name: tulipa, in Italian tulipano, comes to us, it is said, from the Turkish tuliband, or the Persian dulbend, whence is obtained, by corruption, turban, the characteristic head-gear of the Orientals. Thus, at bottom, tulip and turban are the same word, only altered in form.

Who does not know with what a glory of colours the skill of our horticulturists has succeeded in clothing the tulip?

Inasmuch as the cultivated species bears the distinctive addition of Gesneriana,—and of this species all existing tulips are but varieties,—we might reasonably suppose that Gesner, the celebrated Swiss naturalist (who died at Zurich, aged sixty-nine, in 1565), was the first to speak of it. But he makes no allusion to it in his "Historia Plantarum" (printed at Bâle in 1541); he only refers to it in his "Additions" to the works of Valerius Cordus, published in 1561.

We subjoin a literal translation of the words of Conrad Gesner:—

"In the year 1559, at the beginning of April, I saw at Augsburg, in the garden of F. H. Herwart, magistrate of that town, a plant whose seed had been brought from Constantinople, or, according to some, from Cappadocia. It was called tulip."

About the same epoch, this plant was cultivated at Vienna, in the gardens of some wealthy amateurs; whence several tulip-bulbs were afterwards sent into England.

This ornamental plant, whose splendour is of such brief duration, became, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the object of a commercial speculation, which marks an epoch in horticultural annals. The towns of Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, Alkmar, Leyden, and Rotterdam, were the head-quarters of the new trade.

The years 1634 to 1637 marked its apogee, its culmination; it was the reign of the tulipomania,—a malady which, notwithstanding its severity, does not figure among our pathological nomenclatures. Bulbs of the variety called Viceroy were sold for 3000 florins (£235) each; and amateurs paid even as high as 5000 florins (£430) for the Semper Augustus variety! Those who had not the needful amount of ready money disposed of their goods, their cattle, and their furniture. And not only the horticulturists, but the seamen, and artisans, and servants, plunged headlong, into this frantic gambling. Tulip bulbs were then as eagerly sought after as shares in the company of the Mississippi in the days of Law,—or in the South Sea Stocks, also set afloat by that ingenious financier.

But it was not so much a love of flowers as a lust of speculation which lay at the bottom of this famous mania. For example, a gentleman engaged a merchant to deliver, at the end of six months, a bulb worth 1000 florins. When the time came, the price of the bulb had either gone up or down, and the contractor paid only the difference; as for delivering the wares, neither party cared about it. It was, therefore, the exact equivalent of a speculation in the funds or in railway shares. The transactions took place on the public exchanges, as well as in coffee-houses, inns, and on the promenades. They originated a fertile crop of abuses, and to put an end to them the intervention of the Government was required.

However, we may cite several examples of distinguished men who have cherished a partiality for the tulip, in the better sense of the word. Among these was Justus Lipsius, the great philologist. In his garden he cultivated with his own hands, it is said, the rarest varieties, and his floricultural tastes were shared by two of his intimate friends, Dodonée (Diodati) and L'Écluse, the two most illustrious botanists of their time.

But all these details, however curious and interesting, do not teach us whether our wild tulip has sprung from the cultivated germs. As it is impossible to solve this problem experimentally, we are forced to be satisfied with a simple conjecture.

And, for our own part, we are strongly of opinion that the wild and cultivated tulips may, from their very origin, have co-existed independently of one another. And now to put forward a fact in support of this statement.

The Heliotrope.

With the Heliotrope every lover of flowers is familiar; it is not less prized for its delicate fragrance than the tulip for its glowing colours. No doubt exists as to the country from which we have imported the cultivated heliotrope, nor as to the epoch when it was introduced: it came from Peru, whence the name given to it by Linnæus, Heliotropium Peruvianium; and was brought into Europe, in 1740, by Joseph de Jussieu. Although not known in Europe above a hundred and thirty years, it is now an "old, familiar face" in every garden. Now, by the side of the cultivated species, a native of the New World, we can place a wild variety, indigenous to the Old World, common in our own country, and, indeed, in all the countries of temperate Europe; whence it has received the appellation of Heliotropium Europæum.

The European species, let me state, is in every respect similar to the Peruvian species, except that its flowers are inodorous and of a paler blue. Yet it was known before the discovery of America,—before the discovery of those regions from which we have obtained the cultivated heliotrope. Thus, the two varieties have existed contemporaneously, and have flourished independently of each other, from their very origin. Why should not such be the case with the wild and cultivated tulip?

The Anemones.

From our Spring posy the delicate Anemones must not be omitted. More than twenty species are cultivated in Great Britain, and I hardly know to which I would give the preference. They are called by that most unmeaning term, "florist's flowers," and from the attention bestowed upon them, the cultivated varieties have been greatly improved. But you and I, dear reader, will go forth into the "wild woods," and enjoy the rich gifts of nature untampered by horticultural science. It is towards the end of March that the wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) begins to expand its graceful leaves and snow-white buds to the stray sunbeams that force their way through the embowering branches of stately elms and spreading beeches, and in April it has attained its full glory, contributing largely to the beauty and the show which then embellish the forest glade. Snow-white, and faint rose-red, and soft delicate lilac,—these are the prevailing hues of its tender petals.

It is said that the wood anemone never blossoms earlier than March 16, and never later than April 2. It opens out its loveliness to the sun about the same time as the swallow returns from the genial South to our land of pleasant verdure. Country children associate it with the appearance of the cuckoo, and call it the "cuckoo flower," but the "wandering voice" is later than the woodland blossom in its welcome to the spring.

Why is it called Anemone? Of course, the English name is derived from the Greek άνεμος, "wind;" but what connexion is there between the wind and the flower? Credulous old Pliny asserted that it never bloomed except when the wind blew. Some of our botanical writers explain that it shivers and bends before the winds of March and the breezes of April. Others remind us that though generally found in the shelter of the groves, it will thrive lustily in windy and exposed localities. But I suspect the true reason of the name is its peculiar sensitiveness to atmospheric changes. As a foreteller of the storm it is not less trustworthy than a barometer, never failing to fold up its exquisite petals when the winds are gathering over the distant hills.

Our plant is considered injurious food for cattle; and it was on account of its unwholesome properties, perhaps, that the Egyptians regarded it as an emblem of sickness; or the idea may have been suggested by its frail and feeble appearance.

The yellow wood anemone is a rare and beautiful variety, which I have sometimes met with among the chalky downs of Kent. Its botanical designation is Anemone ranunculoides.

A still richer species is the Anemone pulsatilla, or Pasque Flower Anemone; a silky downy plant, easily recognised by its blossom of glowing purple. The blue mountain anemone (Anemone Apennina) is only to be found, as its name indicates, on the bold rugged sides of lofty mountain-heights.

The Anemones belong to a very important order,—the Ranunculaceæ, or Crowfoot family,—which is divided into five sub-orders: 1. Clematidæ; 2. Anemoneæ; 3. Ranunculaceæ; 4. Helliboreæ; and 5. Actœæ, or Pœniæ. Linnæus distinguishes forty-one known genera, comprising a thousand species. There are nine British genera of Anemoneæ.

In Drayton's "Poly-Olbion" occurs a rich descriptive passage,—an exquisite "flower-piece,"—which, on account of its beauty, deserves to be better known, and more frequently quoted. The poet is enlarging upon the floral rites which were celebrated at the espousals of the rivers Thame and Isis, and sets before us a bright bevy of Nymphs and Naiads; engaged in twining "dainty chaplets" to deck the persons of the bride and bridegroom. The stalwart Thame,—so it seems to them,—should not be "dressed with flowers to gardens that belong," but with blossoms plucked from his own meads and pastures. As most of those selected are fit for a spring-time nosegay, we may well enrich our pages with quaint old Drayton's enumeration of them:—

Here the poet resorts to the garden for his decorative wreath, but is careful, as we shall see, to eschew "florist's flowers," and to select only our dear old favourites:—

If our space permitted, we should like to gossip awhile about each of the flowers commemorated by our old poet, for to each attaches some legend, or romantic tradition, some rural observance, or sweet poetical association. But we must continue our researches, and they bring us now to the Arum.

The Arum.

To the French the Arum is commonly known as the Calf's foot (Pied de veau). It is a common enough plant, growing on the borders of the wood, and delighting especially in the shade of the hazel trees, but it bears not the slightest resemblance to the hoof of any quadruped whatsoever, unless, indeed, to a very fervid imagination there should be visible a shadowy similitude in its leaf.

And it is, in truth, asserted—but, not having the eye of faith, the editor cannot see any ground for the assertion—that its sagillate or arrow-headed leaves, marked by a strongly-defined midrib, bear a certain likeness to the "under bi-ungulated face" of the foot of a young ruminant. Appearing in the early days of spring, they contrast agreeably, by their shining verdure, with the colour of the dead leaves heaped up at the base of the hedgerows. Simultaneously with its leaves comes forth a curious organ,—rare in vegetables of temperate regions, common in the tropical palms, and characteristic of the family of the Aroidaceæ, to which our Arum belongs. This organ, rolled up in a coil or spiral, is named the spathe. It protects the flowers in their young state, and, as they are developed, gradually falls off. Its colour is a greenish yellow; at the summit it is sometimes streaked with purplish veins, and at the base it swells out in a globose fashion.

A small thermometer, introduced into the interior of the rolled-up spathe, indicates a rise of temperature equal to one or two degrees above that of the external atmosphere. Whence comes this difference? Because in the spathe is frequently found imprisoned another organ, the seat of the mystery of reproduction. This organ is a fleshy axis, on which are arranged the flowers in two distinct rings; the upper is occupied by the stamens, reduced to simple anthers (sessile stamens); observe the filamentous appendages—they are abortive ovaries. These same appendages also surmount the lower ring, where several rows are set of sessile ovaries; each ovary composed of a single lobe, containing a very small number of ovules, the majority of which miscarry as the ovaries become metamorphosed into bright red berries: these are the fruits which appear in autumn; they form a spike or ear of coral, each containing, ordinarily, a single seed. The flowers, as a consequence of this separation of the two sexes, are monœcious; the succulent axis which bears them is called a spadix.[53] On tearing open the spathe, our glance first rests upon the apex of the spadix, which has a club-like form, and is of a beautiful violet-red colour. The two rings of sexual organs have much less attraction for the profane; the lower ring, loaded with female flowers, is more prominent than the upper ring, which bears the male flowers.

The root of our Arum also deserves a particular examination. It is a white tubercular stock or stem, containing a quantity of fecula, mixed, as in the West Indian manioc, with an acrid poisonous principle which produces a burning painful heat in the throat. This injurious principle is destroyed by exposure to the fire, and by repeatedly boiling the plant in water. After being thus heated, there remains only the fecula, in the form of a white powder, which, in times of scarcity, supplies a very nutritious food. "I made use of it," says Bosc, "during the storms of the Revolution, when I had taken refuge in the solitudes of the forest of Montmorency. This plant is so abundant in this forest, and in many other localities, that, at the epoch I speak of, it would have ensured the subsistence of several thousands of men, if they had known its alimentary properties. I was seriously counting on the resources which it would place at my disposal, when the death of Robespierre relieved me from my difficulties."[54]

Our arum, which we have taken as a type of the family of the Aroidaceæ, is called maculatum, or "spotted," in allusion to the white and violet spots with which its leaves are besprinkled.

Another, and not less interesting species, is the Arum arisarum. (See Fig. 34, a.) It loves to display its exquisite leafage on the rocks bordering the "sea-marge," and is found in profusion along almost the entire littoral of the Mediterranean. It is a precocious flower—making its appearance about the end of December, and flourishing until the beginning of Spring. The spathe, which in the Arum maculatum has all the aspect of an etiolated leaf, assumes, in the Arum arisarum, the tints of a corolla,—is of a beautiful warm red violet, streaked with white. The fleshy axis, which ought rather to be called gynandrous (both male and female) than a spadix, is of a red colour; naked in its upper portion, which terminates with a kind of apple. It would remind a drummer-boy of the formidable staff carried by his drum-major (see Fig. 34, b.); the stamens, reduced to the condition of bilobed anthers, are mounted around the central part; and the ovaries, less numerous than the stamens, occupy the base of the axis. Each monocular ovary is crowned by a sessile stigma, and each lobe contains a great number of erect ovules. In the Arum maculatum, the number of ovules does not exceed six. Some botanists have laid hold of this characteristic as an excuse for withdrawing the Mediterranean species from the arums, and creating a new genus, arisarum. The variety we have just described is, in that case, denominated the Arisarum vulgare.

The ancients have mentioned numerous species of the arum. But it is a very difficult task to bring their nomenclature into any kind of agreement with the species described by modern botanists. However, we may, I think, regard the arisarum of Pliny and Dioscorides as positively identical with our Arum arisarum. But we are unable to admit that the aron, the hepha, the dracunculus, the dracontium, can be, as commentators represent, one and the same plant; still less can we admit that this plant is our Arum maculatum, which is very much rarer in the south than in the north and centre of Europe. In the solution of such problems as these, geographical botany is an element which must not be neglected. Unfortunately it has never been taken into account by the commentators on the great classical authorities.

Let me advance a simple proposition. Since the potatoe has become diseased, and the species tends to degenerate, may we not find a substitute for it,—at least, a partial one,—among our Aroids, and, notably, in the Arum maculatum?

The Ranunculaceæ.

Let us return for a while to the order of Ranunculaceæ, of which the Anemones have already furnished us with a specimen. Several very poisonous plants are members of this order; and, in truth, very few can be pronounced wholly innocent. I do not think there is much harm in the Lesser Celandine, however—the glossy, starry flower, yellow as a buttercup, with heart-shaped leaves, which Wordsworth has celebrated:—

There cannot be much harm in it, for in the north of Europe the peasantry boil its leaves, and eat them as greens. It thrives in all parts of England, in green woods and meadows, and on wild furzy wastes and open commons; under leafy hedges, and even in the gay pastures, among the primroses and hepaticas. A number of small, grain-like tubers lie around it, close to the surface of the earth; whence it was a common saying in "the days of old" that this plant showered down wheat in its vicinity.

To the same order belongs the Buttercup (Ranunculus bulbosus), whose bulbous root procured for it from our forefathers the name of "St Anthony's turnip."

If the good saint ever partook of buttercup-corms, we do not envy him his sensations; when boiled, they disorder the stomach, and if eaten raw, act as an emetic.

It was formerly thought, says a pleasing writer, that crowfoot (the buttercup is a species of crowfoot), mingled with the pasture, improved its nature, and that the butter yielded by cows which fed upon this mixture was of a superior quality. Nous avons changé tout cela; we are wiser now; and have discovered that cows carefully avoid eating buttercups, and that several kinds of crowfoot are even poisonous to cattle. On some pasture-lands, in those countries where the produce of the dairy receives particular attention, women and children are employed to destroy the crowfoot, which they do either by pulling up the root, or by plucking off the flower, and preventing it from dispersing its seed. The root of the buttercup is of a highly stimulating property if taken in an uncooked state, and its juice will occasion sneezing; but boiling deprives this, as well as many other vegetable productions, of its injurious properties. A similar effect is produced by drying it in the sun; wherefore the hay crop is not at all deteriorated by its acrid nature.

A very beautiful ornament of still pools and gently-flowing streams is the Water-ranunculus (Ranunculus aqua atilis), whose leaves vary according to the depth, or calmness, or swiftness of their watery habitat, and are thus adapted to permit the passage of water without suffering any injury from its force. The leaves on the surface have a round lobed shape; those immersed hang down in thin small fibres, which offer but little resistance to the current.

The Ranunculaceæ also include the Black Hellebore, or Christmas rose (Helleborus niger), one of our most splendid winter-garden decorations, whose juice the ancients considered a wonderful remedy for mental disorders. In whiteness it rivals the snow, which often accumulates around it, and the snow-drop, which is frequently bound up in the same wreath. It is called the Black Hellebore, to distinguish it from the two wild species which grow in our woods, its root being covered with a thick black skin.

The fragrant white Clematis must not be omitted; its starry drops are "things of beauty," which every true poetic eye will know how to appreciate. It is sometimes called "Traveller's Joy," and sometimes "Virgin's Bower;" either name is richly suggestive of pleasant fancies. Do you remember the beautiful picture in Keats's "Endymion," of the shady sacred retreat where Adonis lay and slumbered? The clematis was one of the precious flowers that adorned it:—