4 PRACTICAL USES OF BOTANT. 



to identify its manifold lovely objects, we no longer look at it as at 

 the faces of the people in a strange town, but with the happy feeling 

 of being at home, and among companions. The great value of learn- 

 ing the families, on the other hand, or rather the fine* correlative 

 advantage, each pursuit bearing upon and augmenting the success of 

 its fellow, lies in the illustration which plants cast upon one another. 

 For agreement in structure implies, to a considerable extent, similarity 

 also in properties and uses. When we find a plant bearing a flower 

 composed of four distinct petals, arranged in the form of a cross, and 

 having certain peculiarities in the internal parts (explained in the 

 following pages), we may presume that that plant is wholesome, — not 

 necessarily agreeable to the tongue, but devoid of anything deleterious. 

 The turnip, the cauliflower, water-cresses, and many other esteemed 

 vegetables, belong to this family, any member of which, however 

 great a stranger, or found for the first time by an emigrant in some 

 back settlement, may be eaten with confidence, provided it be juicy 

 and palatable. With the Nightshade-family it is the reverse. Here 

 we must expect venom, cruelty, and even death. Every one has 

 heard of the Deadly nightshade, that malignant plant which hangs 

 out its tempting berries to the imminent peril of those who eat. It 

 is proper to remark, however, that families which contain poisonous 

 species, are not upon that account noxious in every case ; the rest of 

 the family may be harmless, and here and there even wholesome. 

 Making all allowance for this, a great point is still gained in knowing 

 where we are safe, and where we are probably in danger. Similarly, 

 and further illustrating how largely structure and particular properties 

 go together, the Poppy-family is narcotic, the Buttercup-family acrid, 

 the Myrtle-family aromatic, the Gentian-family bitter, and, in medi- 

 cine, usefully tonic. Other families are remarkable for the strong 

 fibres of their stalks, their mucilage, their sourness, their colouring 

 matters, and so on, though always with the limitation mentioned in 

 the case of the poisonous plants ; and many and most valuable have 

 been the discoveries made among their different species by the light 

 of the great principle these facts exemplify. This is not the only 

 reward. A great and noble aim always wins variety of recompense. 

 In studying the families of plants, our eyes arc opened not only to 

 matters of bodily interest, or such as have relation to food, clothing, 

 and medicine, but to that grand and wonderful concord and con- 

 sanguinity of things which far more than the bare fact of their 

 existence declares so plainly the wisdom and love of Ilim who made 



