Chapter II: What May Be Seen Upon the Earth (2)

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:--

"Above his head
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed,
To make a coronal, and round him grew
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,
Together intertwined and trammelled fresh;
The vine of glossy sprout,--the ivy mesh,
Shading its Ethiop berries,--and woodbine,
Of velvet leaves and bugle blooms divine;--
Convolvulus in streakèd vases blush,
The creeper mellowing for an autumn flush,--
And _Virgin's Bower_ trailing airily,
With others of the sisterhood."

Finally, our order comprises the _Hepatica_, with its blue or pink blossoms and three-lobed leaves, which, from their fancied resemblance to the form of the liver, procured the plant its English name of liverwort; the _Flos Adonis_, or pheasant's eye,--the _goutte-de-sang_ of the French,--so called because the ancients fabled that it sprang from the blood of Adonis, when wounded by the bear; the marsh marigold; the gay and vivacious larkspur; the deadly wolfsbane, or aconite, which secretes so potent a poison; and the aromatic love-in-a-mist, or French flower.[55]

_B._--ANIMALS.

Under the soft moss, under the stones, in all localities where mouldiness is easily developed, under the closed doors of cellars, you must certainly have more than once observed a tiny creature of the form of a horse-bean, of a gray leaden colour, and supplied with a considerable number of feet. This last characteristic will induce you immediately to abandon the idea that you have before you an insect.

Catch hold of it, and count its feet.

Well said; but it runs much more quickly than I would have suspected from its previously dilatory movements.

Because it knows that danger threatens it, instinct impels it to escape at its utmost speed. Do not be afraid to handle it; the poor creature can do you no harm.

Unable to escape, it counterfeits death, and remains perfectly immovable.

Now examine it. It has fourteen feet, symmetrically arranged in couples; their size perceptibly increases from the first to the last. When the animal is at rest, they are coiled inside, so as to form an angle whose opening faces the medial line. But here is something much more curious; its body, which does not possess the vestige of a wing, is also without those segments which would divide it visibly, as in the case of insects, into head, thorax, and abdomen; but is composed of rings, hard and scaly, like those of a shrimp.

Can it be a crustacean?

Yes; the animal you hold in your hand, and which everybody knew by the name of wood-louse long before our naturalists knew how to classify it, belongs to the great animal division of the _Articulata_, which, instead of having their skeleton _inside_ the body, like the Vertebrates, have it externally. The Crustacea form a class of this division, to which also belong the Insects, the Arachnida, and the Myriapoda.

Let us continue to anatomise our crustacean.

In front of its first ring (a transversal segment) you see a little black head, with two lateral bead-like eyes, and a couple of antennæ. The latter are each composed of three joints, which are extremely mobile; their base is covered by the edges of the sloping head. The most conspicuous rings of the body are seven in number; their lateral borders are pointed in front, and rounded behind. But, if you look closely, you will see some other rings, a little less projecting than the former; they circumscribe the abdominal region, the belly, properly so called, in which the intestines are lodged. These rings, or abdominal segments, are six in number; but they have not all the same form. The one which occupies the tail is triangular, pointed, and surrounded by four (caudal) appendages. The three next segments, counting from the front to the rear, are prolonged laterally in a very marked manner; the two anterior, on the contrary, have no such distinction. As for the caudal appendages, the two outer ones are very strong, conical, and composed of two articulations, while the inner, situated above the former, are frail, cylindrical, and terminated by a tuft of hairs, whence issues a viscous liquid. (See Fig. 35, _a_.)

An enumeration of these characteristics is tedious, but necessary for the determination of the genus and the species. They belong to the _Oniscus asellus_, or common wood-louse. But why, you ask, why such a strange conjunction of names,--one Greek, ὀνίσκος, the other Latin, _asellus_? Both carry the same meaning: why not, then, have called our tiny crustacean an ass-ass (if such a compound be possible)? Why, neither close at hand nor at a distance, has it the slightest resemblance to an ass; and to say that we have only borrowed these names from the ancients, is neither an explanation nor a justification.

But we have not yet done with the wood-lice. Are these interesting little creatures (they _are_ interesting, are they not?) oviparous or viviparous? I defy you to show me anywhere a single wood-louse's egg. Have the patience to observe our crustaceans more nearly. Among the crowd, you will remark some--they are the females--with a kind of membraneous pouch underneath the body, stretching from the head to the fifth pair of legs. The pellicle which forms this pouch is so thin, and so transparent, that you can distinguish the eggs within it. These eggs, instead of being expelled for incubation, remain in the mother's pouch until they are hatched. At that felicitous moment, the membranous bag splits cross-wise, longitudinally and transversally, to permit the emergence of the young wood-lice. The latter are extremely small, and in form resemble nothing in the world so much as a little white line (Fig. 35, _b_). They differ from their parents only in having one pair of feet, and one ring less than they have. They undergo no metamorphoses. After their birth, the little ones, which have proportionally very large antennæ, do not immediately separate from their mother. By a wonderful act of forethought on the part of Nature,[56] they keep themselves concealed in the middle of the respiratory _laminæ_, which garnish the under part of the tail.

The specific characters of the _Oniscus asellus_ are tolerably well defined. By its rings of dark gray, a little lighter at the edges, which form for it an articulated, glossy carapace, marked with white spots, longitudinally arranged; by the uniform pale gray colour of its belly and its legs, covered with scattered hairs; and, particularly, by its habits, our wood-louse, which the Germans call cellar-louse (_Kellerlaus_), is distinguished from its kindred species, of which naturalists have made distinct genera. Thus, the _asellus_ found generally under stones, which counterfeits death by rolling itself up in a ball like a hedgehog, and will rather suffer itself to be crushed than unfold, is the _Oniscus armadillo_, which some naturalists transform into the _Armadillo vulgaris_. (See Fig. 36.) This species prefers the solitude of the field to inhabited places. Its body is considerably expanded, and its rings do not terminate in a point on their lateral and posterior edges.

Another species, equally common underneath stones, has its head and tail covered over with granulations; its antennæ are composed of seven joints, of which the fourth and fifth are perceptibly situated lengthwise. This is the _Oniscus granulatus_ of some entomologists; others have designated it the _Porcellio scaber_. Why not simplify the study of species?

The wood-lice seem to live upon decomposed vegetable matter. But in default of other food, they devour their own kind; in this respect resembling beings who are supposed to rank much higher in the animal hierarchy.

In the pharmacopœia of the ancients our wood-lice found a place. Reduced into powder, and mixed with various substances, they were prescribed as diuretic and aperient; but they were long ago abandoned in medicine.

THE DRAGON-FLIES (_Libellulæ_).

In walking along the banks of a river, you must frequently have seen hovering around you a cloud of insects, whom you would readily take to be butterflies, were not you arrested in your conjecture by the largeness of their head, the length of their body, the form of their vivid, diaphanous, gauze-like wings, and, generally,--which will most astonish you,--by their carnivorous instincts. You have about you and before, then, not butterflies, but Dragon-flies--the _Libellulæ_ of naturalists. They are the _demoiselles_, or "ladies," of the French; so called, perhaps, in allusion to their airy and graceful flight.

Among these Libellulæ, one is called _Eleanora_. If she does not shine so brightly as the others--if her colours are less brilliant--she has, at least, the advantage of being so common that you can easily obtain a specimen.

But, first, let us pause to think of the strange dissimilarity in the names bestowed on the _Libellulæ_ by the English and French respectively. They are the _Dragon-flies_ of the former,--fierce, rapacious, formidable; the _Ladies_ of the latter,--elegant, light, and radiant. Here we have a glimpse of national character. With the Frenchman, "appearance" counts for so much; with the Englishman, everything depends upon the "reality." Yet our English poets can appreciate their gay exterior. Moore speaks of them as--

"Those bright things which have their dwelling
Where the little streams are welling!"
Poor Clare, the Northamptonshire poet, correctly studied--

"The great dragon-fly with gauzy wings,
In gilded coat of purple, green, and brown,
That on broad leaves of hazel basking clings."

And Mary Howitt has seen them--

"Here and there they dart,
And flush like gleams of green and azure light."

Beautiful as they are, they must be ranked among Nature's fiercest and most insatiable destroyers. They are the terror of the insect world. On this point we shall hereafter enlarge, but before I forget it, I would fain relate an anecdote, in illustration of their voracity, which I have read somewhere or other. A naturalist recounts with what interest he has often watched the proceedings of the dragon-fly. He has seen it, in a locality where white butterflies were numerous, dart down as a hawk upon a quarry, seize with its legs a firm hold of a butterfly, and carry it to a branch of an adjoining tree. In a moment one of the white wings would drop from the boughs, and then another would come wavering downwards, and so on, until all four had fallen; and the dragon-fly, after a short pause, would again dart forth in pursuit of a fresh victim. He never launched himself on his prey when on a perfect horizontal line with it; but took care to be either somewhat higher, or somewhat lower, so that he could seize it with his feet.

But now let us consider by what characteristics the reader is to recognise his Libellulæ.

The eyes are very large, the size of the insect considered; of a brown colour, and nearly joined together at the top of the head; in front of this point of junction a tiny vesicle is visible, carrying three _ocelli_ (_i.e._, little, simple, glossy eyes), two on each side, and the third on the anterior margin: the thorax is large, hairy, and composed of two yellow plates; the abdomen laterally depressed, in such a manner as to give great prominence to the medial line. This last and well-marked feature it is which has procured for the Eleanora the scientific name of _Libellula depressa_,--a name proposed by Linnæus, and unanimously adopted; such unanimity being a rare occurrence among naturalists, though, to parody a phrase of Sheridan's, when naturalists _do_ agree, it is something wonderful!

In the male Libellulæ, the upper surface of the abdomen is bluish in hue, and covered as it were with an ashy dust, while in the female it is olive; in both sexes the first and last abdominal segment are of a deeper shade than the other segments. The feet are black, and bristle all over with stiff hairs; the thighs are of a brownish red. The two pairs of wings, each strongly reticulated, present, towards the extremity of the upper border, a black rectangular spot; their base, moreover, is edged with brown spots; the spots of the lower pair are triangular and larger than those of the upper pair, which are nearly linear. They form, to a certain extent, the reservoir of the liquid which nourishes and maintains the circulation of the network of the wings.

The Libellula, which Geoffroy calls (in his "Histoire des Insectes") the _Philinta_, is simply the male of the species we have just been describing. You may see them

"Where water-lilies mount their snowy buds,"

pursuing one another with an abrupt, jerking--I had almost said _staccato_--flight.

* * * * *

A species less common than the preceding, but closely resembling it, is the _Françoise_ of Geoffroy, the _Libellula quadrimaculata_ of Linnæus. It owes its descriptive or specific designation to the colours which diversify its wings. On the outer edge of each, two brown marginal spots are conspicuous: the first at the place where in the Eleanora (and other species) the black spot is found, and the second nearly in the centre of the external border, which, at this point, is considerably compressed; moreover, the lower wings are marked, beneath their yellow base, with a kind of triangular spot of blackish brown, finely reticulated with yellow. Externally, there is no difference of appearance between male and female, except that the abdomen of the latter is somewhat the larger.

* * * * *

Now we come to the _Sylvia_, the _Libellula cancellata_ of Linnæus. Its eyes and thorax wear a greenish hue; the diaphanous wings are spotted with brown near the outer margin; the abdomen is of a bluish-gray; the extremity of the sixth segment, and the following segments, are wholly black.

The _Julia_, or _Libellula grandis_ (Linn.), has been separated from the Libellulæ by the great entomologists, such as Fabricius and Latreille, and included in the genus _Aeshna_ (Phœbus, what a name!), preserving the descriptive adjective _grandis_. What are the reasons put forward to justify this separation? Principally, the form of the abdomen, and the position of those little smooth and simple eyes, like tiny pearls or _pearlets_, which we call _ocelli_. In the Libellulæ, properly so called, the ocelli, three in number, are situated on either side and on the exterior margin of a kind of semi-triangular vesicle, and the abdomen is slightly depressed, and not unlike a club; while in the _Aeshnæ_ the ocelli are placed on a simple keel-shaped transversal embossment, and the abdomen is narrow, elongated, and almost cylindrical.

* * * * *

The _Aeshna grandis_ (or the "Julia") is one of the largest of the British species. Its head is large, and its eyes are of a brown colour shading into blue; the yellow thorax has two bright yellow bands or stripes obliquely painted on each side. The abdomen is of a reddish or even rusty brown; generally spotted with white and yellow at the top and bottom of each wing. This species haunts the vicinity of streams and "silent pools."

* * * * *

We come, in due order, to the _Aeshna forcipata_, or "Carolina," with its dirty yellow head, and its greenish-yellow thorax, the latter marked on each side with three oblique lines of black: the abdomen is black, and composed of segments laterally spotted with yellow.

* * * * *

The _Libellula_, which the illustrious Geoffroy designates "Louisa," is, according to modern entomologists, neither a _Libellula_ nor a _Aeshna_, but a species of _Agarion_,--the _Agarion virgo_ (_Libellula virgo_, Linn.) The Agarions are distinguishable from the Libellula and the Aeshna by their remarkably thin, filiform, and exceedingly elongated abdomen, and by the three ocelli arranged triangle-wise on the top of the head.

The "Louisa" (_Agarion virgo_) is by no means uncommon in England, and may be found along the upper course of the Thames, the Avon, and other rivers. It is easily recognised by its frail slender body, shining with metallic blue reflexes. There are numerous varieties, distinguished by their varieties of "light and shade." The spotless green-winged species is the "Ulrica" of Geoffroy. The two sexes are not alike. In the centre of their delicately-reticulated wings the males have a large bluish-brown spot, which is wanting in the females.

The genera _Libellula_, _Aeshna_, and _Agarion_ compose the small family of the _Libellulites_--a family plainly and conspicuously characterised by the size of their head, and by the two pairs of diaphanous wings of almost equal dimensions (the posterior pair is a _little_ shorter than the anterior), which, while the animal is at rest, are kept horizontally extended.

These are the characteristics which present themselves to the observant eye at the first glance. Do you doubt me? Betake yourself, when

"The bird is building in the tree,
And the flower has opened to the bee,"--

betake yourself, I say, to any sunny pool, half-fringed with trees, or pleasant river-margin; go, armed with net and microscope, and, having secured a specimen of these terrors of the insect world, where

"The strong on weak, cunning on simple, prey,"

devote yourself to its patient examination.

It is only such an examination that can reveal to us some equally important, but less obvious features of the insect. But to catch a Dragon-fly is not always an easy task; the Libellulæ are very timorous, or else they are suspicious of the prowling naturalist who seeks what he can entrap. Their flight is livelier and swifter than even that of the butterfly: when disturbed in their repose, they fly away abruptly, their wings rustling or crackling like a sheet of parchment; if obstinately pursued, they grow irritated, and in their quick jerking movements exhibit all the rage of the Carnivora.

But can our Libellulæ be carnivorous? Most undoubtedly. To convince yourself of it, you have but to glance at their mouth, which is wholly unlike a butterfly's. What an arsenal of weapons adapted for seizing and crushing a victim! How strong are those saw-toothed scaly mandibles! How strong their auxiliaries, the jaws, which terminate in that dentated spring projection, furnished internally with ciliæ! Surely, such instruments testify to their ferocious instincts, and should induce our French neighbours to deny them the graceful name of "les demoiselles." What a libel on tender woman,--on man's "ministering angel!" Do but observe them. They do not rest upon the blossom to extract its nectared sweets; in truth, they could not do so, for they are not furnished with a proboscis. Warlike as the Amazons,--the only portion of the female sex they can justly be said to resemble,--they hover in the air to pounce, like vultures, upon whatever insects may come within their reach; they quickly transfix, and as quickly devour them. If they love to fly about the pools, the marshes, and the streams, it is because they are sure of prey in these localities. And, in fact, they there encounter and devour an innumerable quantity of flies, moths, gnats, and the like.

* * * * *

But there is another reason why the Dragon-flies, obeying the secret impulse of nature, resort to the haunts we have been describing. They were their cradles or nurseries, and they become, in due time, the scenes of their espousals.

* * * * *

Before speaking of the singular metamorphosis they afterwards accomplish, we must touch lightly on the subject of the mode of reproduction of our brilliant _demoiselles_.

It is laid down as a law that, in the insect world, the males are invariably smaller or weaker than the females. Yet this law does not hold good with reference to the Libellulæ, whose males are, on the contrary, larger and stronger than their females. Man may lay down laws, and extort obedience to them, within his own domain; but nature laughs at human rules, and gives up her secrets only to the free thought, unshackled by the fetters of authority.

But why is the male Dragon-fly stronger than the female? Because the former must make the first advances, and carry off his aërial companion to celebrate their bridal. For this purpose, he holds her tightly by the neck, and continues to fly in this way for some few minutes. At length, he perches himself on the branch of a willow, or the leaf of an aquatic plant, along with his companion.

The eggs laid by the female are oblong in shape, and sometimes united together in clusters: the female deposits them in the water, or on some water-floated leaf plant, shortly after their fecundation.

METAMORPHOSIS OF THE DRAGON-FLY.

"To-day I saw the Dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie;
An inner impulse rent the veil
By his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew,
Through croft and pasture wet with dew,
A living flash of light he flew."

--TENNYSON.

If in your walks abroad you should meet with a pool of turbid water, do not object to linger for a moment on its brink. Nature, as a reward for your trouble, will gratify you with an extraordinary surprise. Stir up the mud with a stick, or, better still, with your hand; and then, as the children say, you shall see--what you shall see!

Oh, what an ugly creature is struggling in this handful of slime! It looks like a large spider!

Nay, examine it more attentively; it can do you no harm.

Well, it is a singular animal; greenish in colour, bristling with hairs, and covered with mud. It is not a spider, for it has only six legs and these are exactly like the legs of insects. I can distinctly make out three joints (articulations) to each tarsus, which terminates in a simple hook. The belly is formed of regular segments; is rounded above, and flat underneath. What do I see? On the top, and nearly in the middle, each ring is armed with a spine, so that the row of spiny projections remind one of the back of a crocodile. Pray tell me, what is this curious creature?

Before I tell you, I would have you more thoroughly acquainted with it. Continue your examination.

The face has a strange expression; it looks--the insect, I mean--like a masked knight. Its mask, formed of a scaly substance and thoroughly compact, is composed of two pieces, which are separated from one another by a transversal suture: the upper, which is broader than it is high, we may call the vizor; it consists of two lobes, soldered together longitudinally; the lower, which is higher than it is broad, will be the chin-piece; it is triangular in shape, and its base rests against the vizor, while the summit is jointed or articulated with a support, which acts as a hinge when the mask is raised or lowered.

These movements, let me tell you, are voluntary; the animal raises its mask to arrest on their way the Infusoria and other animalcules on which it feeds. For crushing them, it is provided with strong mandibles, which you can detect by lowering the mask with a pin, or the point of a penknife. The eyes, which resemble little mammillary protuberances, are situated above and outside of the vizor. On the animal's back, where the belly joins the thorax, do you observe those four little sheath-like or scabbard-like tongues? The extremity of the body, the tail, is marked by three conspicuous triangular points, lying close to the opening, through which the water enters and issues, as if it were alternately sucked in and poured out by a piston. This, you must understand, is the respiratory apparatus. (See Fig. 40.)

Well, then, what is the name of this most singular creature, this masked knight?

It is the larva of the _Libellula depressa_; the dismal envelope whence will issue the gaudy Dragon-fly. Listen to a graphic description of the mask you are looking at:--

"Conceive your under-lip to be horny instead of fleshy, and to be elongated perpendicularly downwards, so as to wrap over your chin and extend to its bottom; that this elongation is there expanded into a triangular convex plate attached to it by a joint, so as to bend upwards again and fold over the face as high as the nose, concealing not only the chin and the first-mentioned elongation, but the mouth and part of the cheeks; conceive, moreover, that to the end of this last-mentioned plate are fixed two other convex ones, so broad as to cover the nose and temples; that these can open at pleasure transversely, like a pair of jaws, so as to expose the nose and mouth, and that their inner edges, where they meet, are cut into numerous short teeth, or spines, or armed with one or more sharp claws;--you will then have as accurate an idea as any powers of description can give you of the strange conformation of the under-lip of the larva of those insects, which conceals the mouth and face precisely as I have supposed a similar construction of _your_ lip would do yours. When at rest, this mask applies closely to and covers the face; when they would make use of it, they unfold it like an arm, catch the prey at which they aim by means of the mandibuliform plates, and then partly refold it, so as to hold the prey to the mouth in the most convenient position for the operation of the two pairs of jaws with which they are provided."

And so the creature I have been examining is only a larva! How strange to compare it,--thick, ugly, unwieldy,--with the insect that issues from it, so aërial, so graceful, so light, so beautiful! The more I think of the contrast, the more it interests me.

This larva, however, has all the characteristics of a perfect insect, and I will wager that more than one observer has described it as such, and classified it among aquatic insects. Yet it is but a larva! And each species has its own special larva (see Figs. 40 and 41).

This seems to me as difficult to believe as if you told me that John, James, Peter,--in fact, all men,--were only temporary bodies from which more perfect beings would one day emerge. For the medium in which these masked creatures live,--the troubled and muddy medium for which they are adapted by their organisation, and in which they seem destined to live out their life,--differs wholly and absolutely from the aërial medium wherein, you tell me, they will one day rejoice.

Do you see, on the brink of the pond, those dried-up bodies? They are those of your aquatic insects, the mortal remains of Libellulites; they have rent open their vest, as you would do a garment which had become too narrow; the rent is very conspicuous along the back; and through the fissure issue the winged and aërial resuscitated Dragon-flies, summoned to live in a world differing so widely from their former one! Under the tongues were folded up the wings, and the mask that puzzled you so greatly is split open on the level of the sutures, so as to represent a ⟙, wanting only a handle to reproduce one of those hieroglyphics (☥) which are found so frequently on the Egyptian monuments, and which, according to some Egyptologists, signify _eternal life_.

And here, my friend and companion, we may take leave of

"The great Dragon-fly with gauzy wings."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: The best means of ascertaining the coexistence of an ascending and descending sap have been indicated in "The Circle of the Year," pp. 163-8.]

[Footnote 41: See the _Botanische Zeitung_ ("Botanical Gazette") for the years 1853, 1856, 1859, and 1861.]

[Footnote 42: Boehm, "Sur la Cause de l'Ascension de la Séve," Mémoire communiqué à l'Académie des Sciences de Vienne, juillet 1863.]

[Footnote 43: Chaucer.]

[Footnote 44: Pliny, "Historia Naturalis," xxvi. 5.]

[Footnote 45: See "The Circle of the Year."]

[Footnote 46: Chomel, "Histoire des Plantes Usuelles," ii. 282.]

[Footnote 47: Tournefort, "Histoire des Plantes," i. 103.]

[Footnote 48: Garidel, "Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs d'Aix," p. 56.]

[Footnote 49: "Pied," that is, vari-coloured, motley-coated.]

[Footnote 50: See also Shelley's "Sensitive Plant," &c.]

[Footnote 51: This is common enough in Germany and France, especially in the vineyards, but very rare in England.]

[Footnote 52: So we say, "fretted roof."]

[Footnote 53: When the spike bears numerous flowers, surrounded by a spathe, or sheathing bract, it is called a spadix.]

[Footnote 54: Bosc, a distinguished naturalist, died in 1828, aged 69. In the ministry of Roland, he accepted the delicate post of administrator of prisons; was proscribed after the terrible events of May 31, 1793; and lay concealed, along with Laréveillière-Lépaux, for several weeks in the forest of Montmorency.]

[Footnote 55: The seeds of the latter are used in the East, where they are more pungent than in our cold climates, instead of pepper. "They are thought to be the cummin alluded to in Scripture, where our Saviour reproved the Pharisees for their singularity in minor things, and their neglect of important duties."]

[Footnote 56: That is, the Creative Power which, in common parlance, we choose to call Nature.]