I46 STUDIES 0£ NATURE, 



monies ; they will acknowledge that the flower* 

 far fun" r>refenting an unvarying character in 

 plants, e&i o ts, on t -i e contrary, a perpetual cha- 

 racier of eUvçritfy, It is by this,, principally, that 

 Nature varies the fpecies in the fame genus of 

 plant, in order to render it fufceptible of fecun- 

 dation, on different fîtes. This explains the rea- 

 fon why the flowers of the great cheftnut of India, 

 but originally from America, are not the lame 

 with thofe of the European cheftnut ; and that 

 thofe of the fullers-thiflle, which thrives on the 

 brink of rivers, are different from thofe of thirties, 

 which grow in lofty and dry places. 



A very extraordinary obfervation fhall ferve ir- 

 refragably to confirm all that we have juft now ad- 

 vanced : it is this, that a plant fometimgs totally 

 changes the form of it's flowers in the generation 

 which reproduces it. This phenomenon greatly 

 aftoniihed the celebrated Linnœus, the firfl: time 

 that it was fubmitted to his coniideration. One 

 of his pupils brought him, one day, a plant per- 

 fectly fimilar to the linarium, the flower excepted ; 

 the colour, the favour, the leaves, the item,, the 

 root, the calix, the pericarpium, the feed, in a, 

 word, the fmell, which is a remarkable circum- 

 ftance, were exactly the fame, only it's flowers 

 were in form of a tunnel, whereas thole of the li- 

 narium are gullet-formed. Linna;us imagined, aç 



fini, 



