THE FOXGLOVE FAMILY. 253 



Scrofularia, foetid, or, as in the musk plant, aromatic. Many of the 

 English and commonly cultivated species are notorious for their ill 

 scent when bruised or broken. The blossoms are generally hand- 

 some and attractive. In properties they are acrid, bitterish, purgative, 

 and emetic, many having the secretions so highly concentrated, as 

 happens with the " Digitalis," that they become valuable in the hands 

 of the physician. Structurally they are characterised as follows : — 



Leaves either scattered, opposite, or whorled. Flowers axillary, or 

 in racemes, dichotomous panicles, or spikes. Calyx of four or five 

 sepals, more or less united, and often unequal, the upper sepal being 

 the largest, and the two lateral ones the smallest. Corolla of four or 

 five petals, either slightly united at the base, or completely, into a 

 tubular form, and always more or less irregular. Stamens usually 

 four, two long and two short ones, sometimes only two, and attached 

 to the inner surface of the corolla ; in a few cases there are as many 



Fig. 151. 

 Flower of Veronica (magnified). 



as five. Ovary single, with a solitary style ; fruit a two-celled cap- 

 sule, which opens when ripe, by little valves, and allows the abundant 

 seeds to fall to the ground. The flowers are very frequently of gay 

 and attractive colours, and not seldom have two or more colours 

 intermingled in the same corolla, but they are rarely endowed with 

 sweet smell. Some of the oddest varieties of the irregular corolla 

 occur among them, as the pocket-like, in the Calceolaria, and the 

 " personate " or mouth-like, in the snapdragon, which, by gentle pres- 

 sure at the sides, opens and closes like the muzzle of a quadruped. 

 The resemblance is continued into the capsule. 



Fifty-five species grow wild in Britain, twenty-seven of them occur- 

 ring near Manchester. They are conveniently resolvable into — 



Sec. 1. Species with four stamens, two long and two short ; 

 " 2. Species with two stamens, or the genus Veronica (Fig. 151) ; 

 " 3. Species with five stamens, or the genus Verbascum. 



