THE IVY-LEAVED TOAD-FLAX.

Linaria; Toury. La linaire; Fr. Das flackskraut; Ger. Linaria; Ital., Sp., and Port. Dikol len; Russ.

"Fair is thy level landscape, England, fair
As ever Nature formed! Away it sweeps,
A wide, a smiling prospect, gay with flowers,
And waving grass, and trees of amplest growth,
And sparkling rills, and rivers winding slow
Through all the smooth immense. Upon the eye
Arise the village and the village spire.

The clustering hamlet, and the peaceful cot
Clasped by the woodbine, and the lordly dome,
Proud peering 'mid the stately oak and elm
Leaf-loving. Sweet the frequent lapse of brook,
The poetry of groves, the voice of bells
From aged towers, and labour's manly song
From cultured fields upswelling. Sweet the hues
Of all the fertile land; and when the sun
And shower alternate empire hold, how fresh,
How gay, how all enchanting to the view,
Beheld at first, the broad champaign appears!"

CARRINGTON.

THERE was a time when, as the stage-coach rolled along at the rate of nine miles, or, as on some of the less direct roads, at the rate of six miles an hour, we might catch passing glimpses of beautiful and extensive landscapes, ever varying in detail, but yet presenting one rich harmonious whole of loveliness. That time is past; and now, as we are whirled along some twentyfive or thirty miles an hour, it is as much as we can do to notice whether a church has a tower or a spire before it is lost to view. We miss the old park palings, covered with lichens, which we were continually passing by; the aged, but yet firm, walls of stone, decorated

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with ivy and ferns, and surmounted with wall-flower, and stone-crop, and hawkweed, and snap-dragon, and the whole host of wild flowers which bear witness to the permanence of our social condition, in attesting the age of the substantial erections which they adorn. We like to see a new wall, well built, clean, neat, and free from moss and lichen, which in time gain a local habitation upon it, whether it be of stone, or flint, or brick; but we prefer the rough-hewn stone-work of former generations, from the mouldering crevices of which we see vegetable beauty emerging. And not the least ornamental of these vegetable decorations is the plant whose name stands at the head of this article. It is nearly allied to the snap-dragon, of which we have elsewhere spoken. Summer and winter this elegant plant adorns every old stone wall on which it becomes a denizen. We always admire it, even when our minds are struck with the surpassing beauty of other plants, and although we are diverted by the appearance of some flower which blooms for a short time only, and then is lost to view for a year to come. We strolled the other day to a neighbouring eminence, to feast our eyes upon a widely spreading vale below, and as we returned we passed through a hazel copse just cleared of its ten years' growth. There were plenty of primroses in flower, and we soon observed a few wood anemones, but as we advanced so as to command a view of the entire copse, we were struck by the immense number which were visible of this delicately beautiful flower. We have seen meadows as thickly studded with daisies as the milky way is with stars, and to which the name, perhaps, might be with greater propriety applied; but we never saw them more

numerous than were the pale sweetly-scented flowers of the wood anemone on the cleared surface of this hazel copse. We gathered a few fine specimens and wended our way homeward, passing by an old wall where the Ivy-leaved Toad-flax grows luxuriantly, and there we could not do otherwise than stand to admire its graceful trailing stems, studded with beautiful pale purple flowers.

The root of the Ivy-leaved Toad-flax is fibrous. Its stem round and smooth, prostrate, trailing, branched, and leafy. The smooth and rather fleshy leaves are furnished with flat footstalks, and set alternately upon the stem. They are roundish and heart-shaped at the base, cut into five lobes, their upper surface being of a smooth shining dark green, while underneath they are paler, with a purple tinge. From the axilla proceed long, slender, round, spreading stalks, at the extremities of which grows the solitary flower, whose calyx has five lanceolate segments, which are shorter than the tube of the corolla, which is cylindrical, of a pale purple colour, and is furnished with a short pointed spur at the base on the lower side. The limb of the flower cup is two-lipped, the upper one consisting of two oblong blunt lobes, of a rich purple, with veins of a deeper colour, the lower lobe being bent back, and having three obtuse lobes, with yellow palate, swollen into two obtusely conical protuberances, and downy within.

This perennial plant flowers throughout the summer, -we may almost say throughout the year, in different situations. Where it is exposed to the south, and sheltered from every other aspect, it begins to bloom very early; and where growing in a situation exposed