490 WILD FLOWEKS OF 



Are now a scene of rural glee, 



With many a nutting swain and maid. 



The scrambling shepherd with his hook, 



'Along hazel bows of rusty brown 

 That overhang some gulphiag brook, 



Drags the ripen'd clusters down." * 



Nor is the botanist without his interest in the 

 auburn clusters. The catkins of the hazel were waving 

 in January, the first pennons of the progress of sta- 

 meniferous action, yet nine months have elapsed ere 

 the ripened nut has presented itself to view. And 

 now singly or in thick clusters the nuts appear enve- 

 loped in their shrouding husks, clinging close to the 

 hazel branches, very different in aspect from the long 

 waving catkins. But these only shed the pollen 

 necessary to fructify those tufts of sessile crimson 

 threads that on branches below the catkins are ready 

 in early spring to imbibe the impregnating influence 

 provided for them. It needs a prying eye to see 

 these red stigmas clustered together within their 

 scales, each pair surrounded by a jagged involucre, 

 which, growing large and succulent, becomes the husk 

 surrounding the nut. The stigma shrivels up, but at 

 its base is a two-celled ovary whose shell hardens on 

 the one hand, while one ovule alone filling the cavity 

 with its embryo, the perfect nut is completed. Often 

 the cluster of red stigmas are only partially fructified, 

 and then one or two nuts only are formed, but if the 

 whole take, then a large cluster is perfected. The 

 hard shell now safely shelters the kernel, which is the 

 food appropriated for the young embryo, should it 

 remain for vegetation. In that case, unmarked by 



* CLARE. 



