268 FLORA HISTORICA. 



SPEEDWELL. Veronica, 



Natural Order Personatcc. A Genus of the Biaiidria 

 Monogyjiia Class. 



No flower in field, that dainty odour throws, 

 And decks his branch with blossoms over all, 

 But there was planted, or grew natural. 



Spexser. 



We have no less than seventeen species of the Ve- 

 ronica that are indigenous to our country, varying 

 so much in their nature that some display their 

 azure flowers only in the stream, whilst others 

 exhibit their blue corollas on the chalky hills and 

 sandy fields, some fix themselves in marshy ground, 

 some seek the shade of woodlands, and one species 

 attaches itself to old walls. 



To this family of plants we have added forty-one 

 exotic species, making, in the whole, fifty-eight, 

 several of which are greatly celebrated by old medi- 

 cal writers, as being efficacious against so many 

 disorders to which the human frame is subject, 

 that the author of *' Hist. Plant, adscript. Boer- 

 haavey says he has cured a hundred different dis- 

 orders with the Veronica Orientalis ; and Francus 

 wrote an entire work on the virtues of this single 



