74 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[April 1, 1S70. 



a warning to beware of the terrible venom 'which 

 "pervades the Order." 



Although the poison of this common Cuckoo- 

 pint of ours is chiefly concentrated in the conn, 

 death has resulted from eating the leaves. (Vide 

 Stephenson and Churchill's " Medical Botany," 

 vol. i.) One almost wonders how the children 



Fig. 6s. Arum inundation, \ nat. size. 



who thus victimized themselves could possibly 

 have swallowed the acrid fiery stuff, which causes 

 a most painful burning and benumbing sensation in 

 the tongue and throat, if the inside of the mouth be 

 only touched with a bruised leaf or broken stalk. 



Unrolling the hood we behold the spadix (a). 

 " The spadix is a spike with a succulent axis, in 

 which the individual flowers have no bracts, but 

 the whole inflorescence is enclosed in a long bract 

 called a spathe"; perhaps our simplest plan is to 

 regard it as an elongated flower-stalk or primary 

 axis, bearing two sorts of flowers of the simplest 

 kind, both destitute of calyx and corolla, aud with 

 the aforesaid axis considerably prolonged beyond 

 the inflorescence. At the base of this central stalk 

 (fig. 70) we have (I) a cluster of fertile pistils 

 surmounted by (c) & frill of one or two rows of 



rudimentary or aborted organs of the same kind ; 

 above these we come to (d) a group of perfect 

 sessile stamens, and higher still another frill (e) of 

 these last-named organs in a rudimentary or aborted 

 state. In the days of our childhood we used to cut 

 these curious stalks off close down to the sheath of 



i 





fl 



Fig. 69. Spathe of Arum muculutum, after Lindley, nat. size. 

 Fig. 70. Spadix of Arum maculatum, x 3. 



the hood, and to stick them in flowerpots filled 

 with sand, with the club downwards ; the red and 

 the purple ones we dubbed Lords, and the yellow 

 and the white ones Ladies; the bead-like pistils 

 made the coronets, and the aborted appendages 

 constituted the ruffs and collars,— the tout ensemble 

 being not unlike the kings and queens of a set of 

 old English ninepins. TVe were always told that 

 this general resemblance to the ninepin aristocracy 

 had won for these harbingers of spring the popular 

 appellation with which this brief notice of them is 

 headed. 



If we take a plant early in the season, and place 

 the gynceeeum thereof under the microscope, the 

 perfect female flowers will be seen to be of the 

 form shown in fig. 71, while the aborted contingent 

 will resemble fig. 72. It will be remarked that in 

 these immature examples the fertile and the sterile 

 organs are of precisely the same size, but in a later 

 stage the growth of the barren members is arrested ; 

 the aborted pistil seems to differ from the perfect, 

 form only in the stigmatic tuft being protruded, or 



