THE CACTUS FAMILY. 289 



The finest and most stately of the English Campanulas, the flowers an inch 

 and a half long. This and the rotundifolia are the two common ones of the 

 district. 



7. Creeping-kooteu Bell-flowek — {Campanula rapunculoides.) 



Naturalized in hedges about Dunham, Ashley, and in Bowdon Vale. 

 (Mr. Geo. E. Hunt.) Found also at Withington. Fl. July, August. 



E. B. XX. 1369. 



This heautiful family is represented in gardens hy the Canterbury-bell, or 

 Campanula medium, sometimes called " steeple-bells," the ovary covered by the 

 reflexed lobes of the calyx ; the clustered bell-flower, or Campanula glovierdta, 

 (Curtis, iv. 593.) with large deep-purple flowers in a compact head; the peach- 

 leaved, or Campdnula persicifolia, pei-fectly glabrous in every part, and with the 

 lower leaves narrow-oblong ; several small species resembling the wild rotundi- 

 fdlia ; and a pretty little annual called " Venus' looking-glass," or Prismatocdrpus 

 speculum, with procumbent stems, the branches three-flowered, the calyx with 

 long, linear, spreading lobes, and deep violet corollas, very sensitive to the light. 

 In-doors there is also grown the splendid Campanula pyramlddlis, with light-blue 

 rotate corollas, and the inflorescence pyramidal. Speuies of Phyteuma, Adeno- 

 phora, and the Trachelium ccerideum, are likewise in cultivation. 



XC— THE CACTUS FAMILY. Cactdcea;. 



The Cactus Family "is composed of several hundred species of 

 grotesquely succulent plants, almost always unprovided with leaves, 

 and consisting only of angular stems, which are either tall, upright, 

 and pillar-shaped ; or slender, trailing, and snake-like ; or branched 

 into a number of thick flat two-edged joints, resembling the claws of 

 a crab or lobster. In some extraordinary instances the stems are 

 globular, and in nearly every case are defended on the angles or 

 sui-face by a strong chevaux-de-frise of sharp thorns. The flowers 

 are often of great size, usually handsome and brilliant, and formed 

 of numerous lanceolate petals, crimson, rosy, or white, which, in 

 the larger kinds, enclose a multitude of stamens on long filaments 

 that resemble a tassel of white silk. They are always sessile, and for 

 the most part very fugitive, usually lasting but a day or night. There 

 are species in which the customary splendoiu- is not attained, and 

 where the flowers are insignificant, as in the case of the yellow- 



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