302 WILD FLOWEBS OF 



afterwards apparent, the lower flowers being first 

 matured. In this genus the styles are conspicuously 

 exserted at an early stage of the flowering, and the 

 broad disc of the minutely downy yellow stigma is 

 reflexed to come in contact with the stamens ; but 

 scarcely is this process accomplished, than the upper 

 lip of the corolla expands upon the stigma, while the 

 lower lip curls upward, thus drawing the curtains 

 upon the process of fructification, and enveloping the 

 delicate ovary in a brown wrapper till the ripened 

 seeds are ready to be evolved. I have observed the 

 same process in LatJircea. The seeds are very nume- 

 rous, and when examined with a lens appear vesicular, 

 like minute fragments of scoriae ; they thus adhere to 

 themselves and to the stem of the parent plant, re- 

 maining upon it often until the ensuing spring, unless 

 accident upsets and breaks off the old withering yet 

 persistent brown stem. 



In some pastures, in June and July, the broad-leaved 

 Dock (Rumex oltusifolius), appears very conspicuous, 

 though generally with most of the other species of 

 this inelegant family, confined to waste ground and 

 puddly rushy commons, that seem like mendicants in 

 the rude rags of neglect, or patched with the refuse 

 of vegetation. There is nothing very tempting to the 

 eye in the stocks and posts of such anserine parian 

 places, where mud, knot-grass, and dirty discarded 

 plumage accumulates around the shallow, green, and 

 stagnant ponds, and rotting timber lies prostrate year 

 after year so turn we from them, leaving all the 

 docks without any further docking on our parts. Yet 

 on the sides of sequestered ponds or slow rivers, the 

 great Water-dock (Rwmex Hydrolapathim), with its 



