Stamens to _ sepals, and not four or eight. eats bonrubby 0:om Be th definite flowers oe; sbuine y-parte calyx, petal s iad,fleshy plates, pie withouaf - CXXIV. Resedacee. 5 Borg fruit open at the mess In nette me ena of thestamens growgr out of a large glandular one-sided exogens, shrubs =~ Lota tals four or eight, dae toup raga» flowers solitaryor sa pal exalbuminous, and ene: Capparidacez. on them; They are chiefly th? ig‘ofthe tropics or counties -ayeniiom| CXXV. placentas dens fruit is fleshy and indehiscent, with parietal polys,

The Cistals are chiefly European, and possess anti-scorbutic and and in with an acrid flavour, combined properties, the;nulating Mustard, of nitrogen. er decay they give out large portions

Seakale, and the Cabbages, Radish, and’ Turnip, are well-

known species belonging to the order, which contain 173 genera and 1,600 species. The Cructrer# is one of the most natural groups of the whole vegetable world, and in studying one of the species which compose it we may study all. Let us take as a type one flower, the Wallflower (Fig. 391). This flower 1 regular. The calyx is composed of four sepals, free and straight, the two lateral bulging out at the base. The corolla throughout. The stamens are tetradynamous, that is to say, they num ber six, of which four are large and two smaller; they até also At their base is composed of gland of which are of ag ish colour, enclosing, 5° to speak, two little sta whilst the other long s, two reen-

Fig. 301.—The Wallflower. mens, four are smaller, and are placed on the outside of the stamens. The pistil is composed of a very elongated ovary, © mounted by a rather short style, of which the stigmate is bilo-

bate. When at maturity this ovary presents two cells. It is, however, unilocular when young, with two parietal placentz, filled with ovules. At a certain period of its development it has only one gland starting from one of these two parietal placenta, and advancing towards the interior it meets the gland of the opposite placenta and is joined to it, and this constitutes a dissepiment which separates the ovarian cavity into two compartments. When arrived at maturity this ovary becomes a siligua, as the long pod of the Cruciferse is termed; when these seeds, which are destitute of albumen, enclose an embryo with flat cotyledons and lateral roots, that is to say folded upon the commissure of the cotyledons, or face by which the carpels adhere. We have already said that the family of the Crucifereeis constructed upon one great common type. ‘There are nevertheless some secondary characters, arising from the regularity or irregularity of the corolla, the shape of the fruit and of the embryo, which serve to distinguish the different genera; for example, the lberis have two petals much larger than the others. Then the fruit, which in the Wallflower isa siliqua, is a silicula, or as broad ; 7.¢. an - long, in the Thlaspi, when it becomes Lomentaceous indehiscent legume in the Raphanus, monospermous and indehiscent in the Jsatis, &c. With regard to the embryo, the radicle does not always fold upon the commissure of the two cotyledons as it does in the Wallflower; it is sometimes folded upon their k, as in the Jsatis, whose cotyledons are not level, but are folded longitudinally, and rolled back upon themselves. Among the more remarkable plants belonging to this vast vegetable family, we will mention the Cochleria officinalis, which is a most powerful antiscorbutic;the Garden Cress (Lepidium sativium); the Water-cress, (Nasturtium Officinale); the Horse radish (Cochlearia amoracia);the Radish (Raphanus sativus), of which two varie-tes (the turnip and long Radish) appear at our tables; the © long Cabbage (the fleshy roots of which are a little acid and Sweetish); the Colza (Brassica oleifera), the seeds of which h an excellent lamp-oil; the Garden Cabbage (Brassica oleracea), which furnishes us with the Cabbage, the Cauliflower, the Brocoli; the Black Mustard (Sixapis nigra), the seeds of which afford a volatile oil, to which they owe their exciting

virtue; the’ Woad (satis tinctoria), the blue roots of which furnish a colouring,matter called woad; various specimens of Lunaria and Erisium, Mathiola, Chenanthus, and Hesperes, are cultivated as ornamental plants. Nearly all plants of the family of the Crucifers contain a juice of an acrid and piquant flavour, due to the presence of a volatile oil, which though it exists under all circumstances, becomes more developed under the influence of hot water, as seen in mustard seed. The presence of this acrid and exciting oil communicates to the plants of this family the antiscorbutic virtues which medicine ascribes to them. Some Crucifers are employed as aliments on account of the mucilaginous and saccharine matter which they contain, and which corrects the acridity of their juices; others furnish a lamp-oil from their seeds, which is much used. The plants of this family are very little cultivated for ornamental purposes, although some remarkably pretty flowers are found within its limits. For fragrant aroma few plants excel the Wallflower. Who does not remember

“ Some rude stone fence, with fragrant Wallflower gay,”

or the bright green shining Cardamine pratensis—the

“ Ladies’ smock, all silver white,”

whose praises Shakespeare sung?

The Resepacem, of which the common Mignonette (Reseda odorata) may be considered the type, are soft herbaceous plants, or, in a few instances, small shrubs, with alternate entire or pinnate; leaves and minute gland-like stipules; flowers in racemes oF spikes;; calyx many-parted; petals broad fleshy plates. They are ere ‘of the South of Europe and adjoining parts of Asia, and of - shores of the Mediterranean. A few species occur at the Cape, again in Australia,. The common Mignonette, whose delicious scent has caused ie be universally cultivated, is a native of Northern Africa. by its lanceolate entire trifid leaves, six-parted calyx, equal oo Y length to the petals, which are finely cleft into many club-shapel divisions, the two lowest simple; the capsules three-toothed. ~~ 3 nonette is naturally a small herb, but it has become the when i635train it in greenhouses until it becomes a shrubby plant,

called the Tree Mignonette, rising three or four feet from the pot in which it is grown. The Capparipace® are chiefly found in the countries bordering on the tropics; they resemble Crucifers in being stimulants, antiscorbutic, and aperient; the principle of acridity becoming 80 concentrated in some of them as to be dangerous. Some of the African Capparids are poisonous. MALVALS. Flowers monodichlamydeous, placenta axile, calyx valvate in estivation, corolla imbricated or twisted, stamens definite, embryo with little or no albumen. One hundred and sixty genera; nine hundred and thirty-three species. Large trees and shrubby exogens, with perfect two-celled stamens, turned outwards. The order is tropical, or at least of hot countries. The Baobab trees of Senegal, remarkable for their enormous size and great longevity, belong to the order, The Bombax of American forests, With huge buttresses projecting from their enormous trunks, belong to the order, and most of the great trees of the order possess valuable properties. CXXVI, Sterculiacee. Exogenous trees, shrubs, or undershrubs, occasionally with a climbing habit, having monodelphous stamens, partly sterile and two-celled; anthers turned inwards: flowers often in clusters, sometimes in spikes or panicles; calyx four, five-lobed, valvate, in gstivation, or arched and drawn out into a strap; stamens hypoynous, definite, and opposite the

CXXVII. Bythneria-petals; fruit generally a capsule. They are natives of tropical countries, | } cer. The Cacao, a chief ingredient in chocolate, belongs to the order, ana Many species yield valuable fibres for cordage. Herbaceous, or half-shrubby exogens, with free stamens, without dise, albuminuws seeds, embryo curved, permanent petals, and ribbed calyX, flowers white, red, or pink, in panicles or corymbs; calyx ten ribbed, With five valvate divisions; petals with claws, hypogynous; stamens ten, hyposynous, those opposite the sepals inserted in a fleshy gland, The known species are natives of Brazil and Chili, Their properties are litde known, CXXVIII. Vivianiacez. . Smooth herbaceous exogens, of tender texture, and trailing or twining habits, with one-tlowered axillary peduncles; flowers yellow, scariet, Orange, or blue; free stamens; no dise; seeds without albumen, and an amyudainid embryo. The Indian Cresses, a name which their acnd € has procured for them, are natives of temperate America. CXXIX. Tropzolacess. Exogenons trees, shrubs, and herbaceons plants, with showy flowers, n enclused in an involucre uf various forms, columnar stamens, all CXXX. Malvaceze. rfect, and one-celled anthers turned inward. _Exogenous trees and shrubs, with few herbaceous plants, with free eamens outside the disc, albuminous seeds, and straight embryo. Some CXXXI, Tiliacese. of thas are weed-lke plants of the tropics, sometimes with handsome White or pink flowers. Among the Srercuniace.®, which are large trees or shrubs, all natives of the tropics, having the columnar stamens of the

Mallows, none excited greater surprise than the Adansonias, or Baobab trees of Africa, when they were first introduced to the botanical world; their enormous size, and their prodigious longevity, estimated in some instances at some thousands of years, took the world by surprise.

The Baosas (Adansonia digitata) is a tree of tropical Africa, which has been transplanted by man into Asia and America. It may be ranged among the marvels of nature. lis trunk does not exceed fifteen or eighteen feet*in height, but its girth is enormous, attaining, as it sometimes does, the circumference of thirty to forty feet. This trunk separates at the summit into branches fifty to sixty feet long, which bend towards the earth at their extremities. The trunk being short, and the branches thus curving towards the earth, it follows that. the Baobab presents at a distance the appearance of a dome, or rather a ball,of verdure, over a circuit of a hundred and sixty feet. Adanson concluded, from the observations he made, and from his calculations upon their growth, that some of the spect mens which he studied could not have been less than 6,000 years old. But it is the general opinion of botanists that this estimate was enormously overrated. One of these monstrous trees is represented as photographed from nature in Plate XIV. This colossal vegetable was first observed by Adanson on theaa Senegal, and, after him, the genus was named Adansonia. The a Baobabs have since been discovered in the Soudan at Darfour, and 4 in Abyssinia. sake The bark and leaves of this tree possess considerable emollient Its | properties, of which the natives of Senegal take advantage. =” flowers are proportioned to the gigantic trunk; they ee: oo length of four and a half and five inches, their breadth bens from seven to eight. The fruit, called by the F rench settlers me ia the Senegal Monkeys’ Bread, is an ovoid capsule, pointed at 0” of its extremities, and from twelve to twenty inches long, by a to seven broad; that is, the fruit is about the size of @ — agen It encloses in its interior from ten to forty cells, containing seve"™ kidney-shaped seeds, surrounded by mucilaginous pulp. Baobab. —:

The natives make a daily use of the dried Jeaves of the their ee They mix them with their food, for the purpose of reducing a —;

Plate XIV.—Baobab Tree (Adansonia gigantea).

excess of perspiration and modifying the ardour of their fiery climate. The fruit is eatable; its flesh is sweet, and of an agreeable flavour;the juice, when extracted and mixed with sugar, forms a beverage very useful in the putrid and pestilential fevers of the country. The fruit is transported into the eastern and southern parts of Africa, and the Arabs pass it on to the countries round Morocco, whence it finds its way into Egypt. The negroes take part of the damaged fruit and the ligneous bark, burn them for the sake of the ashes, from which they manufacture soap by means of palm oil. They make a still more singular use of the trunk of the Baobab; they expose upon it the bodies of those among them whom they consider unworthy of the honours of sepulture. They select the trunk of some Baobab already attacked and hollowed out by insects or fungi; they increase the cavity, and make in the trunk a kind of chamber, in which they suspend the body. This done, they close up the entrance of this natural tomb with a plank. The body becomes perfectly dry in the interior of this cavity, and becomes a perfect mummy without further preparation. This kind of sepulture is especially reserved for the Guerrots. The Guerrots are the musicians and poets, who in the tombs of negro kings preside at all fétes and dances. During their life this kind of talent gives them influence, and makes them Tespected by other negroes, who look upon them as sorcerers, and honour them under the title; but after death this respect is succeeded by a kind of honour. These superstitious and in- © fantile people imagine that if they consigned the body of one of these sorcerers to the earth, as they would the bodies of other men, that they would draw npon themselves the celestial malediction. Hence the monstrous Baobab serves as the resting-place of the errot. There is a strange poetry in this custom of a barbarous People which leads them to bury their poets between heaven and earth in the side of the vegetable king. : The leaves of Adansonia digitata are of a deep green, and divided into five unequal parts, each of which forms a narrow lanceolate figure, radiating from a common centre, the outermost ng smallest. The flowers, which grow singly in a pendulous Position from the bosom of the leaves, are large and white,

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