THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



No. 41. MARCH 1841. 



I. — Considerations respecting Spur-shaped Nectaries, and those 

 of the Aquilegia vulgaris in particular. By M. Ch. Mor- 

 REN, Professor in ordinary at the University of Liege, 

 Member of the Royal Academy of Brussels, &c.* 



[With a Plate.] 



1 HE Columbine, that pretty ranunculaceous flower of our 

 vv^oods, deserves attention, as vrell on account of its structure, 

 curious as it is, and, we venture to add, but little known, as 

 from the historical recollections which it brings to mind. To 

 say nothing here of the medicinal virtues which Dioscorides 

 attributed to his Isopyron or to his Phasiolon, — a plant which 

 Fabius Columna, Clusius, Dodonaeus and many other learned 

 botanists suppose to be no other than the Columbine itself; 

 and not to mention Adrian Junius, who also quotes it as a 

 medical plant ; or Francois Rapard, a celebrated physician of 

 Bruges, who addressed to Clusius a letter upon its uses in 

 difficult labours ; ought we not to remark that its singular nec- 

 taries, compared by some to the beak and talons of an eagle, 

 by others to the graceful neck of the pigeon, by some to 

 rams'-horns, and by others to capuchins' hoods, had so gained 

 the attention of the painters of the middle ages, that it be- 

 came one of the favourite flowers, placed in great profusion in 

 the illuminations of missals and manuscripts of the time ? The 

 ' ancoiles' or the ' ancolyes' were there intermixed with the 

 leaves, flowers, or fruit of the strawberry or of the campanula ; 

 and Memling was most particularly attached to it. When 

 Dodoens wrote his ^^ CtU^tlt-25otk,^^ the name Aquileia or 

 Aquilina was still a novelty ^w^/ introduced, he says, by the 

 latest phytographers of his own time. The name Aquilegia 



* Translated from the original communicated by the Author. 

 Ann. ^ Mag. N. Hist. Vol. vii. B 



