290 . FLORA H1ST0RI(!A. 



SPEEDWELL. Veronica. 



Natural Order Personate : a Genus of the Diandria 

 Monogynia Class. 



** No flower in field, that dainty odour throws, 

 And decks his branch with blossoms over all, 

 But there was planted, or grew natural." 



Spenser. 



We have no less than seventeen species of the 

 Veronica that are indigenous to our country, vary- 

 ing 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 wood- 

 lands, 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 medical writers as being efficacious against so 

 many disorders, to which the human frame is 

 subject, that the author of '' Hist. Plant, adscript. 

 Boerhaave,'' says he has cured a hundred different 



