AQUILEGIA CHRYSANTHA. GOLDEN COLUMBINE. 2'] 



But ill what particular respect it is supposed to have committed 

 the folly of being thankless does not appear. Another old-time 

 poet, Browne, tasks it with "desertion": — 



" The Columbine in tawny often taken, 

 Is then ascribed to such as are forsaken." 



In this case it is probable that tawny varieties were seldom 

 seen ; and when one did appear, it seemed all alone, deserted, 

 as it were, by its dove-colored friends, and therefore those " who 

 loved to talk in flowers " might find in this exceptional color an 

 eloquent speaker. 



Ophelia remarks in " Hamlet," 



"There 's fennel for you, and Columbines," 



and in this might have implied both folly and desertion. It is 

 remarkable that with so extensive an association of this pretty 

 flower with these unpleasant ideas, it has been impossible so far 

 to find any clew to their origin. 



The Columbines afford a great deal of interest to those who 

 are fond of studying the laws of plant life. There is a wide 

 range of varying color and form among them, and yet they seem 

 so nearly related that botanists have great difficulty in deciding 

 on the characters which are to define the species. There is, 

 indeed, a suspicion among some of them that they are all merely 

 varieties ; that is to say, departures, at no very distant date, from 

 one primordial form. In cultivation Mr. Josiah Hoopes, of West 

 Chester, finds that the European species and those of America 

 readily intermix when growing near each other, the pollen being 

 carried to and fro, either by insect aid or by wind ; and some 

 botanists contend that the sweet liquid in the nectaries is 

 secreted by the plant for the especial purpose of inducing insect 

 agency in cross-fertilization. The ease with which the varieties 

 or species break up when near each other in this way is the 

 more remarkable from the fact that in their native places of 



