LILIES AND ORCHIDS 135 
flower, with a purple seed-vessel in the centre, mark it out 
at once; and, to add to its peculiarity, it rejoices in a par- 
ticularly unpleasant smell. The number three, for some 
extraordinary reason, is abandoned, and four is chosen as 
the key. Four long thin sepals and four yellowish petals 
surround, usually, eight stamens, with a four-fold pistil 
in the centre. Not content with all this eccentricity, 
the Herb Paris boasts of a network of veins in its green 
leaves, and refuses to abide by the ordinary parallel 
arrangement of its near relations. It does not produce 
honey, but Dung-flies appear to mistake it for carrion, 
and wander all over the flower, deluded by the smell, and, 
of course, bestow the pollen as the plant desires. 
Another eccentric member is the Butcher’s Broom, 
which declines to produce any leaves at all, or, rather, 
never brings them beyond 
an imperfect stage. In 
their place the stem is \ J / 
flattened out into a leaf- Si yy 
Ly 
like appearance, as you Us < ( 
\ y 
will see from the illustra- ING 
tion. Ona young shoot <=>; 
the leaves ee be sue as GE, Mysly ! LZ 
Il scales, and f EOAWL 
small scales, and from = DA WSS 
their junction with the “A A: : S\ 
stem the new branches ee: | MS 
spring forth, which flatten Wy 
out and fill the leaf’s / 
office, the original scale- 
leaf humbly falling off. 
The flowers spring from the centre of these flattened 
stems, and the little scale-leaf appears again at the spot 
from which they come. Why the plant has taken this 
BUTCHER’S BROOM. 
