ONCE more we hail with gratitude the returning spring! In winter, when the earth is bound up with ice, and covered with a bed of snow; when the trees are divested of their leaves, and appear dead; and the very herbage seems annihilated, then "the lord of the soil" casts his eyes over the barren waste with a sigh. As his reason alone could not lead him to believe, that the tree would ever again blossom, or the earth be again clothed with a beautiful carpet of vegetables, so his heart sinks within him, from a fearful apprehension, that the LORD OF ALL is unmindful of his necessities. This, ye legislators! is the period, when you should, in imitation of the churches of Rome and of England, appoint your days of bumiliation and solemn fasts: for it is at this gloomy season that man feels his dependency on a power above him. But when the sun so diffuses its warmth through the air, as to loosen the flinty brook, and edge it with green; and when the full bladed grass appears, and awakened nature sees a new creation, then the husband man exclaims, with exultation, "MAN IS NOT FORGOTVol. V. No. IV. X

MILTON.

TEN!" for here and there are pledges of an adorable reminescence, and traits of a wonderful renovation! Then seize, legislators! this season of returning spring for your national thanksgivings, when every sense and every heart is joy. If in winter the husbandman

46

marks not the MIGHTY HAND "That ever busy, wheels the silent "spheres,"

he cannot miss it "in the fair profusion that o'erspreads "the spring."

The poets have conveyed their ideas of spring, by describing this genial season, as a youth of most beautiful air and shape, with a blooming countenance, expressive of satisfaction and joy, and clothed in a flowing mantle of green, interwoven with flowers; a chaplet of roses on his head, a narcissus in his hand, while primroses and violets spring up under his feet.* The or

The poets have described spring, accompanied by Flora on one hand, and Vertumnus on the other; and immediate

ly followed by a stern figure, in shining armour; this is Mars, who they say has long usurped a place among the attendants of spring.

nament and pride of spring, Milton's bright consummate flower," must therefore be the theme of our present number.

Every one may think that he knows precisely what is a flower: it is however remarkable, that botanists have been not a little puzzled in fixing their definition of it. The celebrated French botanist Tournefort tells us, that "a flower is a part of a plant very often remarkable for its peculiar colours, for the most part, adhering to the young fruit, to which it seems to afford the first nourishment, in order to explicate its most tender parts." Is this a definition? Pontedera, in his Anthology, tells us that "a flower is a part of a plant unlike the rest in form and nature." Jussien says that "that is properly a flower, which is composed of stamina and of a pistillum." But some flowers have no pistillum. Vaillant advanced one step beyond his predecessors, and asserts that "the flower ought, strictly speaking, to be reckoned the organs, which constitute the different sexes in plants: for that the petals, which immediately envelope them, are only the coats to cover and defend them," but he adds, "these coats are the most conspicu. ous, and most beautiful parts of the composition; and therefore to these, according to the common idea, shall I give the name of flower." Martyn went a little farther, and defined

flower to be the organs of generation of both sexes, adhering to a common placenta, together with their common coverings." Nay, if we consult Johnson's Dictionary for a definition, we shall find that “a flower is that part of a plant which contains the seeds," which definition is more applicable to a peapod. The early botanists meant by the term anthus, flos, or flower, what is now understood in common conversation

by that term, namely, the rich and delicate looking painted leaves or petals, which adhere to the seed vessel, or rudiment of the future fruit. In truth, botany was unknown to the ancients, as a science. They had no distinct term to express the petals of a flower, so as to distinguish it from the green leaves of the plant. Virgil, in describing his amellus, which is a species of aster, the flower of which has a yellow middle and purple rays, and calls it a golden flower surrounded with purple leaves. All his translators, excepting Martyn, the botanist, have mistaken his description

"Aureus ipse [flos] sed in foliis, quæ plu

rima circum "Funduntur, violæ sublucet purpura nigræ." GEORG. IV.

Addison makes the leaves of the plant purple. Dryden makes the bough purple; and Trapp gives the stem a golden hue. All this confusion has arisen for want of a word in the Latin language to express the petals of the corolla, as distinct from the common leaves of the plant. Modern botanists have borrowed the word Tay from the Greek to express the beautiful rich leaves of the flower merely; and thus they avoid all ambiguity in description. We make no apology for this dry discussion. Our aim is perspicuity rather than elegance. We wish to give

the student of nature a less confused idea of a flower than he commonly finds in books; and we hope we shall give him a distinct idea of the beautiful but complicated thing before us.

Since the adoption of the sexual system, the petals, which excite the admiration of the florist, are considered by the botanist, as coverings

* See Lee's Botany, p. 4.

only to the essential parts of the flower. A flower, therefore, in modern botany, differs from the same term in former writers, and from the common acceptation of it; for the calyx, the petals, nay, the filaments of the stamina may all be wanting, and yet it is a flower, provided the anthers and stigma can be traced. The essence of a flower then consists in the anthera and the stigma; and they constitute a flower, whether they be supported by a calyx, or surrounded by a petal, or petals, forming that chaplet, coronet, or little crown denominated in Latin, corolla. A patient observer may find these nice distinctions illustrated in ferns, mosses, mushrooms, lichens and sea-weeds.

Let us now examine a complete or perfect flower; and let us first look at

The CALYX; which originally meant the green bottom of a rose bud; but it is now extended to that green flower cup, which is generally composed of five small leaves; and which incloses, sustains and embraces the corolla, or painted petals, at the bottom of every flower, and, indeed, envelopes it entirely before it opens, as in the rose. The calyx which accompanies almost all other flowers, is wanting in the tulip, the hyacinth, the narcissus, and indeed the greater part of the liliacious tribe. The admirably accurate GREW called this part of the flower "the empalement," and defines it to be the outermost part of the flower, encompassing the other two, namely, the corolla, or what Grew called "the foliature," and the stamina and pistillum, which he called "the at

tire."

The terms perianthum, involucrum, amenthum, spatha, gluma, calyptra and volva, are but different appellations of the varied calyx. LINNEUS tells us,

that the calyx is the termination of the cortical epidermis, or outer bark of the plant; which, after accompanying the trunk or stem through all its branches, breaks out at the bottom of the flower, in the form of the flower-cup. In the sexual system, or, as some will have it, the allegory of the illustrious Swede, the calyx is called the thalamis floris. The calyx is rarely one entire piece, but of several, one laid over the other. This structure serves to keep the whole flower or composition tight; and at the same time, allows it to recede, as the parts of fructification increase in size: it is like slackening the laces of the stays, stomachers or bodices, in cases and circumstances not entirely dissimilar. standing on a firm basis, as tulips, have no calyx; but where the foot of each petal is long, slender and numerous, as in pinks, they are kept within compass by a double calyx. In a few instances, the calyx is tinctured with a different colour than green; and then it is not easy to distinguish the painted calyx, from the painted corolla. Linnæus however gives this simple rule; the corolla, in point of situation, is ranged alternately with the stamina; whereas, the segments of the calyx stand opposite to the stamina. Thus much for the calyx.

Flowers

The COROLLA is the circle of beautiful coloured leaves, which stand within the calyx, forming a chaplet, composed of a petal or petals; for so we call those delicately painted leaves, which excel in beauty every other part of the plant. In the piony, the petals are blood red; in our garden lilly, a rich and delicate white; and in tulips and violets, charmingly variegated. The number of petals in a flower is to be reckoned from the base of the corolla; and the number of the seg

ments from the middle of it. If the petals are quite distinct at the bottom, the flower is said to be polypetalous, or to consist of more petals than one; but if the petals are united at bottom, though ever so slightly, then the flower is monopetalous, or consist of one petal only; thus the cranberry is monopetalous and not tetrapetalous, because, though the petals fall off in four distinct parts, they were originally united at the base.*, A bell-shaped flower consists of one petal, and is denominated corolla campanulata, and a funnel-shaped flower colla infundibuliformis; a gaping fower corolla ringens; but the corolla cruciformis consists of four petals; and the but terfly shaped flower, or corolla papilionacea, consists of five petals, as in the pea blossom. The number five is most remarkably predominant in the petals of flowers.

There are, moreover, irregular flowers, consisting of dissimilar parts, which are generally accompanied with a nectarium, as in the larkspur. The nectarium, so called from nectar, the fabled drink of the gods, is that part or appendage of the petals, appropriated for containing, if not secreting the honey, whence it is taken by the bees. All flowers are not provided with this receptacle for honey, although it is probable that every flower has a honey-secreting gland. The irregularity of the form and position of this receptacle frequently puzzles young botanists. Sometimes the nectarium makes part of the calyx; sometimes it is seated upon the anthera, and sometimes it is fixed in the common base or receptacle of the plant. Plants in which the nectaria are distinct from the petals, that is, not lodged within their substance, are generally

Philosoph. Botan. Linnæi.

poisonous. If the nectarium do not exist as a distinct visible part, it probably exists as a pore or pores in every plant. It may hereafter be demonstrated, that this secretory apparatus is primarily necessary to the fructification of the plant itself. Rousseau says, that the nectaria are one of those instruments destined by nature to unite the vegetable to the animal kingdom, and to make them circulate from one to another. A flower and an insect have great reserablance to each other. An insect is nourished by honey. May it not be needful that the flower, during the process of fructification, should be nourished by honey from the nectaries? Sugar is formed in the joints of the canes, for, perhaps, a similar purpose.

STAMINA PISTILLA: within the corolla stands, what Grew called the attire; but what are now called the

stamens and pistils, which in the sexual system, and Linnæan hypothesis of generation, are the most important organs of a plant; for on the number and respective position of the sta eas and pistils, that prince of botanists has founded his famous sexual system.

The stamina are filaments or threads issuing from about the middle of the flower. Each stamen or thread is surmounted by a prominence or button, containing a fine powder. This protuberance is called the anthera, which is a capsule with one, two, or more cavities. See Grew's graphick descriptions, from plate 55 to 64 inclusive, where these capsules, with their pollen are finely delineated. The summit of each stamina is called by way of

+ Philosoph. Eotan.

All the grasses have nectarias. In the Passion flower, it is a triple crown or glory.

pre-eminence, anthera, or flower. It contains the pollen, which term means in Latin the very fine dust in a mill. Some conceive this dust to be infinitesimally small eggs or seeds, or rather organick particles, molecules; others compare it to the seminal fluid in animals. This pollen, or fecundating power is very conspicuous in the tall white garden lilly. This powder is collected by the bees; and is formed, by some secret process in their bodies, into wax; which is a singular species of vegetable oil, rendered concrete by a peculiar acid in the insect.

The pistillum, which is the Latin word for a pestle, stands in the centre of the flower: this term has been adopted, from the fancied resemblance of a pestle in a mortar. It is placed on the germen, or seed bud; its summit is called stigma, and, in many flowers, resembles that bone of the arm, denominated the os humeri; but its form varies in different kind of flowers. The

surface of the stigma is covered with a glutinous matter, to which the fœcundating powder of the antheræ

adheres.

The germen is then the base of the pistillum, and contains the rudiments of the seed, which in the process of vegetation, swells and becomes the seed vessels. It answers to the ovarium, or rather uterine

apparatus of animals. The pericarpium is the germen, grown to maturity, or the plant big with seed.

The receptacle is the base, which connects the before mentioned parts together.

Fructification is a very significant term: it is derived from fructus, fruit; and facio, to make: we are not entirely satisfied with the definition, which our great master has given of this compounded word; he says,

it is a temporary part of plants appropriated to generation, terminating the old vegetable, and beginning the new. We have just described the seven parts of fructification; when recapitulated, they are in order, as follows: (1) The calyx. (2) The corolla. (3) The stamina. (4) The pistillum. (5) The ger men or pericarpium. (6) The seed; and (7) the receptacle.

Having described the seven several component parts of that curious offspring of a plant, denominated a flower, we have now leisure to make a few remarks on the whole composition. We cannot readily believe, with most botanists, that the petals, or to take them collectively, the corolla, have no other use, in the vegetable economy, than merely to cover and guard the sexual organs. It militates against one of the most conspicuous laws of nature, where we never see a complicated contrivance, for a simple end or purpose; but always the reverse. There is a breathing, or pulmonary system, in every vegetable; an artery belongs to each portion of the corolla, which conveys the vegetable blood to the extremities of the petal, there exposing it to the light and to the air, under a delicate membrane, which covers the internal surface of the petal, where it often changes its colour, as is beautifully seen in party coloured tulips and poppies.* The vegetable blood is collected at the extremities of, what Darwin calls, the coral-arteries, and is returned by correspondent veins, exactly as in the green foliage.

It is presumed, that this breathing, and circulating structure, has, for its end, the sustenance of the anthers and stigma; as well as for the secretion of honey, wax and es

* See Darwin's Phytologia.