24O STUDIES OF NATURE. 



prickly arms, loaded, their whole length through, 

 with lamps of violet-coloured flowers. The ver- 

 bafcum, on the contrary, extends around it, it's 

 broad leaves of folemn drapery, and fends* up from 

 it's centre a long diftarT of yellow flowers, as falu- 

 tary to the ftomach, as grateful to the touch. The 

 violet, of deep blue, contrails, in the Spring, with 

 the primrofe, expanding it's golden cup with a 

 fcarlet brim. On the embrowned angles of the 

 rock, under the made of ancient beech-trees, the 

 mulhroom, white and round as an ivory piece for 

 the chefs- board, arifes out of a bed of mofs of the 

 moil beautiful green. 



MuQirooms alone prefent a multitude of un- 

 known confonances and contrafts. This clafs is, 

 firft, the moil varied of all thofe of the vegetables 

 of our climates. Sebajlian le Paillant enumerates one 

 hundred and four fpecies of them in the vicinity 

 of Paris, without taking into the account the fun- 

 goïds, which furnifh, at leaft, a dozen more. Na- 

 ture has difperfed them over moft fhady places, 

 where they frequently form contrafts the mod ex- 

 traordinary. There are fome which thrive only 

 on the naked rock, where they prefent a foreft of 

 fmall filaments, each of which fupports it's parti- 

 cular chapiter. There are fome which grow on 

 fubftances the moft abject, with forms the moft 

 folemn ; fuch is that which thrives on what falls 



from 



