inducement!" Yet in these purchased marriages there is no certainty of domesti COMPOSITE FLOWERS. BY THE EDITOR. "For who but He who arched the skies, Could rear the daisy's purple bud? DR. MASON GOOD. only. Withering, according to the Linnæan system, places the daisy in the class Syngenesia, which answers exactly to the natural order Composite. FIRST of all, among the Compositæ, or flowers of the composite order, let us consider the modest, crimson-tipped flower," the common daisy, that puts forth its humble head almost as early as It would be absurd to describe the the chilly snowdrop, and lingers on, in daisy, since every child who has not spite of frosty nights and chilly cloudy been bred in a coal mine, or confined in days, till the waning autumn has well- the closest haunts of our great cities, nigh sighed itself away in the frigid grasp knows it when he sees it; for it grows of the stern approaching winter. I have everywhere-by the dusty wayside, close gathered daisies on the first of February, and that after an extraordinarily severe Christmas-tide; I have plucked them, too, when the misty November day was fading into a dreary comfortless evening. In fact, the poet Montgomery was scarcely indulging in the usual license permitted to the members of his guild when he penned the well-known, oft-repeated line "The daisy never dies." The common daisy, Bellis perennis, is, we have already said, a composite flower; that is, it is composed of numerous florets. It belongs, too, to the Corymb group, in which the florets of the centre or disk are perfect, and those of the margin or cirCumference strap-shaped, and with pistils upon the suburbs of the busy, smoky town, in the weedy little front or back garden, on every grassy grave, in every flowery mead, on the hills and in the valleys; and it blooms, as we have remarked, for nine, if not for ten, months of the year. If you examine the daisy, you will find, however, what many people do not sus pect, that the yellow part, called the disk, consists of sixty, seventy, or eighty sepa rate florets, bell-shaped; and these, united with the outer fringe, form the one com pound, or syngenesious flower. Well may Wordsworth call it "the poet's darling," for its charms have been celebrated by more bards than we can presume to quote in the limited space 1 allotted to our floral gossip. To begin with, Chaucer, who loved it almost enthusiastically, gave to it its English name "eye of day," or, as he wrote it, ee of daie"-hence, day's eye, easily corrupted into daisy. In his old age the father of English poesie, loved it better even than in his youth, and he would often exclaim, as if inspired by some fresh idea, "Oh, the daisy! oh, the daisy!" Certainly on this theme he has left behind him writings to us inexplicable; and what was really understood by this mysterious floral symbol, this mediæval daisy-worship, it is now impossible certainly and exactly to ascertain. Listen to these enthusiastic lines: 66 Above all the flouris in the mede As she that is of all touris the floure, To sene this floure, so yonge, so fresh of howe, Of this flourè, whan that it should unclose Well by reson men it callé Maie, The daisie, or else the eye of daie, The emprisè and the floure of flouris all. I praie God that faire mote she fall. And all that lovin flouris for her sake." I suppose most persons can recall the poem which celebrates the emotion of the excellent Dr. Carey, a Baptist missionary in India, when a daisy, reared in that country with unceasing care and pains, was presented to his delightful gaze: VOL. VIII.NEW SERIES. "Thrice welcome, little English flower To this resplendent hemisphere! Where Flora's giant offspring tower In gorgeous liveries all the year. Thou, only thou, art little here, Like worth unfriended and unknown; Wordsworth also has contributed four separate lays in honour of this humble, universal favourite; he writes: "Child of the year! that round dost run Thy long lost praise thou shalt regain; By long-lost praise the poet refers to Chaucer and the elder poets, and the honours anciently accorded to this flower In another poem the laureate of Ryda thus apostrophises the daisy "A nun demure, of lowly port, Or sprightly damsel of love's court, A queen in crown of rubies drest, "A little Cyclops, with one eye, The shape will vanish, and behold "There, in thy scanty mantle clad, But now the share uprears thy bed, Nor can we refrain from noticing the latest-yes, surely the latest tribute to "the poet's darling"-contained in our last month's number of our magazine. Of course we refer to the graceful and beautiful idea embodied by our wellbeloved contributor DAISY H. in her elegant lines, commencing "The passion flower's gaze on a daisy fell," and as all our readers have doubtless perused and duly admired the "Fragment,' we will not transcribe the remainder. The double daisy is produced by rich soil and cultivation transforming the yellow florets into petals, so as to exclude the disk. They thrive best in a moist, loamy soil; but if neglected they quickly degenerate, and return by degrees to their natural state. The Belgians cultivate the daisy to a wonderful extent, and they have more than a hundred varieties of different shades of nearly every colour! We have but the one true species; the variety commonly called "the hen and chicken daisy" is well-known to most people. A near relative of the common daisy, Chrysanthemum leucanthemum, generally called ox-eye-daisy, or moon daisy, very common in some districts, haunting especially the hay-meadows and cornfields in the northern counties. It is much larger and of taller growth than the humble Bellis perennis. Its leaves embrace the stem, and are serrated up wards, and toothed at the base; the root-leaves, however, are on leaf-stalks. The flower is solitary and terminating, and the tiled calyx has its outer scales The daisy is abundant all over Europe; in Italy it is as common as with us, and there it is la patrolina, or the meadowflower. In France it is called la Marguerite, or the pearl of flowers. also its name is said to be derived from St. Margaret of Hungary. Certainly, it figured conspicuously in the early literary history of France, and La Belle Marguerite re-green edged with brown; its inner scales ceived from the troubadours and romance- have a membranaceous border. Its time writers of the dark ages a sort of wor of blooming is June and July. It is a ship. curiously compounded of Pagan, showy flower, and is moreover own sister Christian, chivalric and poetical associa to the cherished and brilliant chrysantions. From them, very probably, our themums of our gardens. The yellow own Chaucer imbibed the spirit which ox-eye or corn-marigold, Chrysanthemum pervades so many of his stanzas. segetum, is far less common; nevertheless it grows in great profusion where it does occur, and Withering speaks of it as an extremely troublesome weed in the sandy fields of Norfolk. In the century after that of the father of English poetry lived the warlike Margaret of Anjou, and she adopted the Herb Margaret" as her device. Later still it was selected by that noble woman, Margaret of Valois, the friend of Erasmus and Calvin, and the sister of Frances I., who was wont to call her his "Marguerite of Marguerites." This daisy not only closes its petals at night, but carefully folds them over the yellow disk in rainy weather. A meadow which seems all one snowy sheet during their expansion is suddenly restored to its pristine verdure if a shower descend; and yet this closing of the petals only continues till the anthers are discharged on the stigmas, so as to prepare seed for future plants. This part of nature's economy performed, the daisy-rays remain expanded until the petals wither away. Composite also is the common dandelion, the Leontodon tararacum, or, according to some late Floras, the Taraxacum officinale. But though of the same order as the daisy, it differs in sub-order; for the Bellis perennis belongs to the Corym biferæ, or Corymb group, in which the florets of the disk are tubular and perfect, and those of the circumference strapshaped and devoid of stamens; whereas the dandelion is included in the Cichorace, or chicory group, in which all the florets, both of the centre and of the margin, are strap-shaped and perfect. As in the case of the daisy, it is quite needless to describe the appearance of the dandelion; for it grows everywhere, a C b de Co from the grassy edge of our dusty highroad paths to the well-tended lawn, where it springs up again and again, to the horror and vexation of the headgardener and all his underlings, and to the joy of children, who are often paid some trifling sum for a given number of dandelion-blossoms gathered before the seed begins to ripen. Its leaves are very deeply cut or jagged, being indeed pinnatifid, which means cleft in a pinnate manner, but not divided to the midrib; they are said to resemble lion's teeth, hence the English name of the plant, corrupted from the French, dent-de-lion. Some people despise the dandelion as a flower, chiefly, I suppose, because it is so very common and so hard to kill; but I believe if it were rare, and only to be reared with pain and difficulty, it would be considered a worthy addition to the catalogue of floral favourites. It shares, like some other plants, in the peculiarity of opening and shutting its blossoms at a fixed hour. J. C. Loudon, Esq., in his 'Encyclopædia of Gardening," says that it unfolds its blooms at six minutes after five o'clock a.m., and closes them at nine minutes after eight p.m. It would be worth while to test the accuracy of Mr. Loudon's statement; but then one must get up very early, and the morning must be fine, and one must be quite sure that one's watch and the sun are accurately keeping time together. 46 The dandelion flowers from March to September, or even October, and it has good store of honey for the "busy bee." Its leaves, early in the spring, are excellent in salads, and on the Continent they are regularly blanched for this purpose, especially for winter salads. A valuable medicine, which acts on the liver, is procured from the roots, and one may now buy at the druggist's Taraxacum wine, which in certain cases is supposed to be extremely efficacious. Everybody has seen dandelion-pills advertised, and also dandelion - coffee, obtained from the roasted roots, and mixed in given proportions with the powder of the genuine coffee-berry. It is said to be very whole. some and pleasant drinking, but I never had the good fortune, or it may be the ill-fortune, to taste it. Withering tells us that when a swarm of locusts once upon a time destroyed the harvest in the Island of Minorca, many of the inhabitants contrived to find subsistence on this plant. The poet Elliot calls the dandelion "the Sunflower of the Spring," and Lowell thus celebrates its praises :- "Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way' Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold; First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and full of pride behold, High hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An El Dorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth! Thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer blooms may be "" But the most perplexing family in the strap-shaped group is the hawkweed, or Hieracium family, a family so extensive in variety, and so difficult of discrimination, that I do not pretend to know much about it. Some botanists recognise thirtytwo species of Hieracium, others only eight; I am content, therefore, to leave them for the present uninvestigated. My friend, Mr. Notcut, of Cheltenham, follows Bentham, and gives a synopsis of eight only, viz.: Hieracium pilosella, or mouse-ear hawkweed; H. aurantium, or orange hawkweed; II. alpinum, H.murorum, and H. Cerinthoides; also H. prenanthoides, H. umbellatum, and H. sabandum. Unobservant persons frequently mistake the Hieracium for the dandelion, and at a distance the error may be forgiven; but examine them closely and you will at once find them widely different. They both, indeed, belong to the same group of the order Composite, and the strap-shaped florets are alike yellow, though the hue of the Hieracium is far more delicate than that of the Leontodon ; the stem of the Hieracium also is wiry and sometimes creeping, while that of the other plant is more succulent, and always cylindrical; the leaves, too, are quite unlike those of the dandelion, being often quite entire and cottony underneath, and at the farthest toothed, and not gashed, or even pennatifid. There is also a slight but agreeable odour in the flower of the Hieracium. The hawkweeds also close at a settled time, and are included in the floral dial. "See Hieracium's various tribes Of plumy seed and radiate flowers, SENSATION. fell he must inevitably be killed or maimed for life. Yet persons who would like to be thought conscientious went, notwithstanding the plain command, "be ye not partakers in other men's sins." But this love of sensation has exhibited itself in a worse form. It has assailed our national literature. Works of fiction are daily pouring from the press abounding in crimes, catastrophes, disasters, improbabilities, impossibilities, and absurdities, strung together sometimes by persons of high literary attainments, sometimes by those of none at all. This is not meant for an attack on works of fiction in general; for some are capable of doing much good; while the class referred to does great and terrible evil. This is a serious matter; not one to be estimated lightly or to pass unnoticed. The time and money spent, and the talent absorbed over such productions is enor mous and dreadful. The votaries of this class of amusement are among the highest as well as the lowest class of readers. The patrician idles his time over the three-volume novel, whilst the plebeian wastes his small leisure over single volumes, "cheap editions," or borrows from a circulating library, and the juvenile portion of the IT is a strange though a well-known fact that with the advance of a nation the language of that nation changes: sons are not satisfied with the language of their fathers, they think they perceive malformations and insufficiences in it; travellers bring home words which they believe express meanings more fully; and from these and other causes the meanings of already existing words become changed, and others altogether obsolete. We see this to a greater or less degree in our Bible, "The Book of Common Prayer," or the works of William Shakespeare; while if we go to Chaucer we find that the curious spelling and obsolete words present a formidable difficulty to the study of "the father of English poetry." But we wish to deal with a word which, after sustaining an important position in the language for some time, has within the last few years acquired a new meaning-community (for want of parental superthe word "Sensation." In an edition of vision) seek a pabulum for their diseased Johnson's Dictionary published in 1798 cravings in " penny numbers." it is simply defined as perception by means of the faculties," and as an example of its application, the following rather peculiar sentence is given, "The brain distempered by a cold, beating against the root of the auditory nerve. and protracted to the tympanum, causes the sensation of pain.' But now the word represents a great and deplorable evil, growing and strengthening in our midst, an evil against which every earnestminded person-much more every religious one--is bound to set his face. Its power was not long ago exhibited by thousands of persons rushing to see a man walking on a tight rope, gyrating on a trapeze, or other such senseless amusement; the interest attached to the spectacle being not in the performer's skill, but in the fact of the performance taking place at such a height that if he Let us have nothing to do with this. Is time so dreary that it must be "killed" in this manner? Is life so aimless that we have no ambition to improve our position? Has the world attained to such a pitch of perfection that we can do nothing to improve it? Have we so lost all sense of duty as to forget the command to "work while it is called to-day" instead of spending it in doing worse than nothing! No! Let us steadily and persistently oppose it. Whether our leisure be much or little let it be spent in those pursuits that will yield profit as well as pleasure, and furnish food for sound reflection and gratified remembrance. This love of sensational literature should be checked in the beginning, or with vitiated taste and corrupted judgment we shall lose all relish for the standard writers in prose and poetry; and while surrounded by all. |