The Botanic Garden. Part II. | Page 6

may be often discovered by the calyx, as in Hepatica,
Ranunculus, Alcea. In those flowers, which have many petals, the
lowest series of the petals remains unchanged in respect to number;
hence the natural number of the petals is easily discovered. As in
poppies, roses, and Nigella, or devil in a bulb. Phil. Bot. p. 128.]
[Iris. l. 71. Flower de Luce. Three males, one female. Some of the
species have a beautifully freckled flower; the large stigma or head of
the female covers the three males, counterfeiting a petal with its
divisions.]
[Cupressus. l. 73. Cypress. One House. The males live in separate
flowers, but on the same plant. The males of some of these plants,
which are in separate flowers from the females, have an elastic
membrane; which disperses their dust to a considerable distance, when
the anthers burst open. This dust, on a fine day, may often be seen like
a cloud hanging round the common nettle. The males and females of all
the cone-bearing plants are in separate flowers, either on the same or on
different plants; they produce resins, and many of them are supposed to
supply the most durable timber: what is called Venice-turpentine is
obtained from the larch by wounding the bark about two feet from the
ground, and catching it as it exsudes; Sandarach is procured from
common juniper; and Incense from a juniper with yellow fruit. The
unperishable chests, which contain the Egyptian mummies, were of
Cypress; and the Cedar, with which black-lead pencils are covered, is
not liable to be eaten by worms. See Miln's Bot. Dict. art. coniferæ. The
gates of St. Peter's church at Rome, which had lasted from the time of
Constantine to that of Pope Eugene the fourth, that is to say eleven

hundred years, were of Cypress, and had in that time suffered no decay.
According to Thucydides, the Athenians buried the bodies of their
heroes in coffins of Cypress, as being not subject to decay. A similar
durability has also been ascribed to Cedar. Thus Horace,
_----speramus carmina fingi
Posse linenda cedre, & lavi servanda
cupresso._
[Osyris. l. 75. Two houses. The males and females are on different
plants. There are many instances on record, where female plants have
been impregnated at very great distance from their male; the dust
discharged from the anthers is very light, small, and copious, so that it
may spread very wide in the atmosphere, and be carried to the distant
pistils, without the supposition of any particular attraction; these plants
resemble some insects, as the ants, and cochineal insect, of which the
males have wings, but not the female.]
With strange deformity PLANTAGO treads,
A Monster-birth! and
lifts his hundred heads;
Yet with soft love a gentle belle he charms,

80 And clasps the beauty in his hundred arms.
So hapless DESDEMONA, fair and young,
Won by OTHELLO'S
captivating tongue,
Sigh'd o'er each strange and piteous tale,
distress'd, And sunk enamour'd on his sooty breast.
85 Two gentle shepherds and their sister-wives
With thee, ANTHOXA! lead ambrosial lives;
[Plantago. l. 77. Rosea. Rose Plantain. In this vegetable monster the
bractes, or divisions of the spike, become wonderfully enlarged; and
are converted into leaves. The chaffy scales of the calyx in
Xeranthemum, and in a species of Dianthus, and the glume in some
alpine grasses, and the scales of the ament in the salix rosea, rose
willow, grow into leaves; and produce other kinds of monsters. The
double flowers become monsters by the multiplication of their petals or
nectaries. See note on Alcea.

[Anthoxanthum. l. 83. Vernal grass. Two males, two females. The other
grasses have three males and two females. The flowers of this grass
give the fragrant scent to hay. I am informed it is frequently viviparous,
that is, that it bears sometimes roots or bulbs instead of seeds, which
after a time drop off and strike root into the ground. This circumstance
is said to obtain in many of the alpine grasses, whose seeds are
perpetually devoured by small birds. The Festuca Dometorum, fescue
grass of the bushes, produces bulbs from the sheaths of its straw. The
Allium Magicum, or magical onion, produces onions on its head,
instead of seeds. The Polygonum Viviparum, viviparous bistort, rises
about a foot high, with a beautiful spike of flowers, which are
succeeded by buds or bulbs, which fall off and take root. There is a
bulb, frequently seen on birch-trees, like a bird's nest, which seems to
be a similar attempt of nature, to produce another tree; which falling off
might take root in spongy ground.
There is an instance of this double mode of production in the animal
kingdom, which is equally extraordinary: the same species of Aphis is
viviparous in summer, and oviparous in autumn. A. T. Bladh. Amoen.
Acad. V. 7.]
Where the wide