190 FLORA HISTORICA. 



the most complete and costly of these baubles are as 

 inferior to the works which nature has employed 

 on the Poppy, as the clumsiest wheel of a country 

 wheelwright is to the finished mechanism of the 

 most celebrated watch-maker. 



The calyx of the Poppy not only shuts in the 

 numerous and large petals of the flower with its 

 innumerable chives bearing their anthers on jDoints 

 as fine as hairs, each anther containing an incal- 

 culable number of fertilizing particles, but it also 

 contains the capsule, which in itself cannot be ex- 

 amined without exciting our utmost admiration of 

 the wisdom with which it has been formed by the 

 Universal Creator. The capsule is covered by a 

 shield-formed stigma thickly perforated, so as to 

 admit the fecundating particles of the farina to the 

 channels which are so disposed around the eleven 

 cells or chambers of the capsule, that each seed 

 receives its regular portion of this matter by means 

 of an umbilical cord, notwithstanding that there 

 are frequently six thousand of these vegetable eggs 

 contained in one capsule. When we reflect that 

 each of these small seeds is so admirably perfect 

 in its minute dimensions as to contain all the es- 

 sentials necessary to form a plant on the following 

 year, which is destined to produce at least twenty 

 capsules, we must exclaim with Pope, 



How wondrous are tliy ways ! 



How far above our kuowledge and our praise ! 



