The Macnor1acex include some of the finest trees and shrubs in the world. The typical Magnolia grandiflora is an evergreen tree of North America, which sometimes attains the height of Seventy feet. Its ovate, oblong coriaceous leaves—the upper sur-_ faces of a pale green, shining and glossy, the under rusty, ie white and erect flowers, with nine to twelve expanding petals-constitute it one of the noblest trees of the American forest. There. are many species of the genus, of which this is the grandest _ - example. Se Other plants of the order are remarkable for the be ity of their flowers. suieetemenitegs tulipifera, the TulipTree, with —

a-dozen popular synonyms, is a handsome tree, with four-lobed truncate saddle-shaped leaves, and large elegant flowers, coloured green, yellow, and orange, sometimes attaining the height of a hundred and twenty feet, and a circumference of twenty feet. Nor is the order deficient in officinal properties, or fragrancy. Their general character is bitter and tonic in taste, with fragrant odorous flowers. M. glaté is so stimulating as to produce fever Loe and inflammatory gout, according to Barton. A species of Michelea, called Tsjampar, is the delight of the people of, India for its fragrant properties.

The Anonacex% are trees and shrubs of the tropics in both hemispheres, whence they spread to the north and south within certain limits. Their general properties are their powerful aromatic taste | and smell, The flowers of some are sweet and fragrant. Others, as Anona squamosa, have a heavy, disagreeable odour. The Dil-leniaceé are trees and shrubs of Australia, India, and tropical America,of comparatively little interest, though some of the Indian species are of great beauty. Dr. Wight speaks of them as equally remarkable for the grandeur of their foliage and the magnificence of their flowers. The plants generally are astringent.

The Ranuncutace®, the typical order of the Ranals, are herbaceous, rarely shrubby, plants, and they are chiefly natives of Europe, with a sprinkling of North American, Indian, and African plants, on the shores of the Mediterranean; acidity, causticity, and poison are the general characteristics of the order, which includes a powerful sudorific in Ranunculus glacialis, & strong diuretic in Aconitum Napellus and Cammarum, drastic _ purgatives in the Hellebores, a virulent poison in some of the seeds of Aconitum and Ranunculus thora, while many of the order are vermefugal and tonic. To give any sufficient idea of this important family, it will be necessary to study successively the Columbine, the Hellebore, the Larkspur, Aconite, Ranunculus, Clematis, and Peony. Country people, struck with the form and elegance of the Columbme (Aquilegia vulgaris), have bestowed the name of “ Our Ladvs gloves” upon its flowers (Fig. 397). Its petals are fashioned with spurs, the shape of a hollow cornet, hooked at their extrem! a ties; there are five of them, which alternate with as many level

and petaloidal sepals. The stamens are numerous, dis in ten phalanges, five of which alternate with the petals and five

;

Fig. 397.—The Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris).

with the sepals, which they exceed in length. The eh of fhe interior face of the anthers is against the filaments, 7

form their dehiscence by two lateral clefts. Of these stamens ten only are represented by filaments dilated in the form of membranous scales of a silvery white, folded upon their edges and laid upon the pistil. The organ is composed of five free unilocular ovaries, containing many anatropal ovules inserted in two contiguous vertical series. These ovaries, when at maturity, change into five free follicles. The seeds which they enclose contain a very small embryo, placed at the base of a thorny and very abundant albumen. With regard to the organs of vegetation, the stem is erect, solitary, or more or less numerous,—that is, one only from the head of the roots to the branching on the upper portion. The radicle leaves, for the most part, stalked; base of the stalk dilated leaflets, broad as long, and petiolated with long petiolated divisions of the first order, irregularly three-lobed stem leaves, few with shorter stalks, the upper ones sessile, bracts narrow and three-lobed. The Columbine (Aguilegia vulgaris) is found growing in its primitive simplicity in hilly woods and upon the borders of the forests of Bondy, Montmorency, St. Germain, Versailles, and in woods and copses where the soil is calcareous, in various parts of England and Scotland. In the chalky ‘\ copses of Kent and Surrey there is no doubt of its being indigenous. In the Helleboré, or Christmas Rose, the sepals, five in number, are large, and the petals small and numerous, and situated at the base of the andracaum (Fig. 398). The may be said to corolla of the Columbine i iescone Rank be a calcareate polypetalous corolla; but s. five sepals: p, five petals. culture has worked many curious modifications in the Columbine. We frequently see the five-petalled cornet enclosed with others, fitted in series, whilst five others, of a like series, are placed opposite the sepals. It seems, in fact, as the flower was entirely composed of these cornets, the one series contained within the other. In other varieties, on the contrary, 1? place of the hollow spur or cornet, we find only oval and almost flat petals, often in considerable numbers. As inall these cases the stamens become scarce as the supernumerary petals increase ™

number, one is led to think that the formation of these petals arises In some way from the metamorphosis of the stamens.

The Hetieporzs have a calyx with five sepals, a corolla having from five to ten petals, short, tubulous, and bilabiate, an indefinite number of stamens and pistils, varying in number from two to ten. They are slightly coherent at the base; and the ovary, like that of the Columbine, contains two series of ovules. The fruit also is a follicle. To give the reader a better idea of the aspect of plants of this tribe, we will take the Crowfoot (/Telleborus fetidus), common enough in stony places by the roadside, and in the glades of forests. It is a plant with a poisonous odour, with thick, generally erect, vertical stem, terminating in a taproot. The stem, which is evergreen during the winter, and ranging from three to six feet in height, is strong and erect, bare in its lower parts, leafy towards the summit, and divided into floriferous branches. The leaves, which adhere to the stem, are coriaceous, and of a spotted green colour, are petiolate, with lanceolated segments, straight, dentate, and generally free at the base. The flowers are inclined, and disposed in branching corymbes. The sepals are eoncave, erect, and greenish, often edged with purple. The follicles are oblong, and rminate in a long beak or spur.

The Hellebores are all interesting to lovers of gardening, because for the most part they flourish during the winter; such, in particular, are the Black Hellebore, or Christmas Rose, and the little Yellow Hellebore, known to botanists under the name of Eranthis hiemalis, which flourishes when the snow begins to fall. The Larkspurs (Delphinium) have a calyx with five unequal petaloid sepals, the upper with straight, pointed, horn-like spur. The petals, which in some species are four in number, in others are reduced to only one by some process of abortion and consolidation, —for originally there are always eight petals, six of which are developed 4n pairs opposite three of the sepals, while two are developed singly opposite the two other sepals. However that may be, the two superior petals in one case, and the single and Superior petal in the other case, are prolonged in a pointed horn _ eluded in the spur of the calyx. The stamens, which are very humerous, are disposed in eight series, opposite to the eight original

The carpels, from one to five in number, are free, sessile,

and verticilate, changing into follicles at a later period, and occupying the centre of the flower. ’ The Delphinium consolida, commonly known under the name of Wild Larkspur, is frequently found at harvest-time in cultivated. fields round Paris, and other places, but in this country it has only been found wild in the Channel Islands. Its stem is slight and straight, with numerous branches, its leaves are slender and thong-like, its short bunches of blue flowers form a panicle. The seeds

of this species partake of the acrid and poisonous properties of the : genus. The expressed juice of: ae the petals, mixed with alum,

hy a? make a blue fluid ink. The form of the flower, with the spurred calyx, is represented in Fig. 399. Many beautiful species of the Larkspur are cultivated in gardens, such as the Delphinium elatum, Delphinium grandi- Jlorum, &c., species originally from Siberia: one of the most elegant is the Delphinium Ajacis, originally from the Eastand from Algeria; it is often met with in gardens, and has also been found where its seeds in our cornfields, have been disseminated, no doubt by some of the aids to nature to which we have alluded elsewhere. (Aconitum) have The Aconites ZZ petaloid sepals, the oot five unequal like is‘formed of which superior

Fig. 399.—Larkspur (Delphinium). a helmet, or galla, lapping over the corolla. This latter organ is composed of from two to eight petals, of which the two upper form an elongated aiglet terminating hood; whilst the lower, which are very small andin a reversed filiform, are often absent altogether. The numerous stamens are and in the centre of the — Larkspurs,disposed in series, as in the

flower we find from three to five pistils, which become follicles. The Aconites are very poisonous narcotic herbs, but when applied with discrimination they become eminently useful in medicine, being employed in cases of neuralgia, rheumatism, paralysis, and purulent infections. The most poisonous species is the Aconitum ferox,which is acrid in the highest degree. The Aconitum Napellus (Fig. 400) is another officinal species; it is rarely met with about Paris, but is often found by tourists in the mountains of Switzerland. On the Jura range it grows to the height of three feet, having straight, simple stems, the upper part slightly branching, furnished with leaves, shiny, of a deep green colour above, and of a pale green below, calyx in five or seven segments, into oblong, incised lobes. Its flowers, which are blue and of an elegant aspect, form elon- iy gated bunches, with two little bracts below 4, gio sconitus each flower. oie The Ranunculus (Fig. 401) has a green calyx, composed of five sepals;the corolla has five petals, furnished at the internal base of their aiglet with a nectariferous pore at the claw, which is covered by a scale. The Stamens and pistils are very numerous; the former are of the ordinary structure, but the latter are disposed in an oblong prolongated globulous head or capitulum, having a short beak, enclosing a single ascending and anatropal ovule, which become achenes after a time. The British Species have all white or yellow flowers; and the achenes occur in several rows, forming a globular, ovoid, or oblong

Fig. 401.—Ranunculus hirsutes. head, terminating abruptly in a point. Many of them are submerged or floating plants of slender stem, Some of them with handsome showy flowers, sometimes covering the whole surface of the ponds or ditches. This is the case With R. trichophyllus, the Water Crowfoot, whose dark green and rather rigid foliage is very conspicuous, and whose leaves,

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