382 WILD FLOWERS OP 



The Colchicum from flowering in a nude state, 

 without any protecting foliage at so late a period of 

 the year has often attracted the attention of observers 

 who might have passed it by at another time. Arch- 

 deacon PALET has adduced it as an apt illustration of 

 his doctrine of compensation, and the Eev. "W. A. 

 LEIGHTON, in the Flora of Shropshire, states its vital 

 economy to be an exceedingly curious evidence of de- 

 sign. PALET says " I have pitied this poor plant a 

 thousand times. Its blossom rises out of the ground 

 in the most forlorn condition possible ; without a 

 sheath, a fence, a calyx, or even a leaf to protect it ; 

 and that not in spring, but under all the disadvantages 

 of the declining year. When we come, however, to 

 look more closely into the structure of this plant, we 

 find, that instead of its being neglected, nature has 

 gone out of her course to provide for its security, and 

 to make up to it for all its defects. The seed-vessel, 

 which in other plants is situated within the cup of the 

 flower, or just beneath it, in this plant lies ten or 

 twelve inches under ground within the bulbous root. 

 The tube of the flower, which is seldom more than a 

 few tenths of an inch long, in this plant extends down 

 to the root. The styles always reach the seed-vessel ; 

 but it is in this by an elongation unknown to any 

 other plant. All these singularities contribute to one 

 end. In the autumn nothing is done above ground 

 but the business of impregnation." The young plant 

 of the present year formed in the preceding one, du- 

 ring the early summer absorbs its chief nourishment 

 from the old parent bulb, gradually enlarging, till in 

 autumn it protrudes through the soil a long sheath 

 from whence arises two or more purple flowers of six 



