Volume Ii Part 2 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Meadia]
65 Woo'd with long care, CURc.u.mA cold and shy Meets her fond husband with averted eye: _Four_ beardless youths the obdurate beauty move With soft attentions of Platonic love.
With vain desires the pensive ALCEA burns, 70 And, like sad ELOISA, loves and mourns.
The freckled IRIS owns a fiercer flame, And _three_ unjealous husbands wed the dame.
CUPRESSUS dark disdains his dusky bride, _One_ dome contains them, but _two_ beds divide.
75 The proud OSYRIS flies his angry fair, _Two_ houses hold the fas.h.i.+onable pair.
[_Curc.u.ma_. l. 65. Turmeric. One male and one female inhabit this flower; but there are besides four imperfect males, or filaments without anthers upon them, called by Linneus eunuchs. The flax of our country has ten filaments, and but five of them are terminated with anthers; the Portugal flax has ten perfect males, or stamens; the Verbena of our country has four males; that of Sweden has but two; the genus Albuca, the Bignonia Catalpa, Gratiola, and hemlock-leaved Geranium have only half their filaments crowned with anthers. In like manner the florets, which form the rays of the flowers of the order frustraneous polygamy of the cla.s.s syngenesia, or confederate males, as the sun-flower, are furnished with a style only, and no stigma: and are thence barren. There is also a style without a stigma in the whole order dioecia gynandria; the male flowers of which are thence barren. The Opulus is another plant, which contains some unprolific flowers. In like manner some tribes of insects have males, females, and neuters among them: as bees, wasps, ants.
There is a curious circ.u.mstance belonging to the cla.s.s of insects which have two wings, or diptera, a.n.a.logous to the rudiments of stamens above described; viz. two little k.n.o.bs are found placed each on a stalk or peduncle, generally under a little arched scale; which appear to be rudiments of hinder wings; and are called by Linneus, halteres, or poisers, a term of his introduction. A.T. Bladh. Amaen. Acad. V. 7. Other animals have marks of having in a long process of time undergone changes in some parts of their bodies, which may have been effected to accommodate them to new ways of procuring their food. The existence of teats on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of male animals, and which are generally replete with a thin kind of milk at their nativity, is a wonderful instance of this kind. Perhaps all the productions of nature are in their progress to greater perfection? an idea countenanced by the modern discoveries and deductions concerning the progressive formation of the solid parts of the terraqueous globe, and consonant to the dignity of the Creator of all things.]
[_Alcea_, l. 69. Flore pleno. Double hollyhock. The double flowers, so much admired by the florists, are termed by the botanist vegetable monsters; in some of these the petals are multiplied three or four times, but without excluding the stamens, hence they produce some seeds, as Campanula and Stramoneum; but in others the petals become so numerous as totally to exclude the stamens, or males; as Caltha, Peonia, and Alcea; these produce no seeds, and are termed eunuchs. Philos. Botan. No. 150.
These vegetable monsters are formed in many ways. 1st. By the multiplication of the petals and the exclusion of the nectaries, as in larkspur. 2d. By the multiplication of the nectaries and exclusion of the petals; as in columbine. 3d. In some flowers growing in cymes, the wheel-shape flowers in the margin are multiplied to the exclusion of the bell-shape flowers in the centre; as in gelder-rose. 4th. By the elongation of the florets in the centre. Instances of both these are found in daisy and feverfew; for other kinds of vegetable monsters, see Plantago.
The perianth is not changed in double flowers, hence the genus or family 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. coniferae. 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 OTh.e.l.lO'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 gra.s.ses, 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 gra.s.s. Two males, two females. The other gra.s.ses have three males and two females. The flowers of this gra.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance is said to obtain in many of the alpine gra.s.ses, whose seeds are perpetually devoured by small birds. The Festuca Dometorum, fescue gra.s.s of the bushes, produces bulbs from the sheaths of its straw. The Allium Magic.u.m, 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 heath in purple pride extends, And scatter'd furze its golden l.u.s.tre blends, Closed in a green recess, unenvy'd lot!