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opportunely. Who can tell how much the attractiveness of the 

 wild carrot, the dandelion, or butter-and-eggs would be en- 

 hanced were they so discreet as to withdraw from the common 

 haunts of men into the shady exclusiveness which causes us to 

 prize many far less beautiful flowers ? 



ROUND-LEAVED SUNDEW. 



Drosera rotundtfolta. Sundew Family. 



Scape. — A few inches high. Leaves. — Rounded, abruptly narrowed into 

 spreading, hairy leaf-stalks ; beset with reddish, gland-bearing bristles. 

 Flozuers. — White ; growing in a one-sided raceme, which so nods at its apex 

 that the fresh-blown blossom is always uppermost. Calyx. — Of five sepals. 

 Corolla. — Of five petals. Pistil. — One, with three or five styles, which are 

 sometimes so deeply two-parted as to be taken for twice as many. 



•' What's this I hear 



About the new carnivora? 



Can little plants 



Eat bugs and ants 



And gnats and flies ? 



A sort of retrograding : 



Surely the fare 



Of flowers is air. 



Or sunshine sweet ; 



They shouldn't eat, 



Or do aught so degrading! '* 



But by degrees we are learning to reconcile ourselves to the 

 fact that the more we study the plants the less we are able to at- 

 tribute to them altogether unfamiliar and ethereal habits. We 

 find that the laws which control their being are strangely sug- 

 gestive of those which regulate ours, and after the disappearance 

 of the shock which attends the shattered illusion, their charm is 

 only increased by the new sense of kinship. 



The round-leaved sundew is found blossoming in many of 

 our marshes in midsummer. When the sun shines upon its 

 leaves they look as though covered with sparkling dewdrops, 

 hence its common name. These drops are a glutinous exuda- 



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