134 MALVACE^ 



people frequently and erroneously term it. A v^ry handsome flower it is, 

 when, in the summer months, from June to August, its mauve petals are lying 

 fully open, and giving a l)right tint to many a waste piece of ground or field 

 border. This species is not frequent in Scotland or in North Wales, but in 

 England it is universally so ; and we have only to walk out of our metropolis 

 towards any of its sulDurbs, and we are sure to find its large handsome 

 rounded leaves, when fresh and young being bright green, but soon becoming, 

 as the plant grows older, ragged and grey. Under the rock, by the road- 

 side, or in the nook where the long bramble-stems are twining, or the large 

 dock-leaves are clustering, many a bright clump of Mallow is to be found. 



"To me the wilderness of thorns and brambles, 

 Beneath whose weeds the muddy runnel scrambles ; 

 The bald burnt moor, the marshy sedgy shallows 

 Where docks, bulrushes, water-flags, and Mallows 

 Choke the rank waste, alike can yield delight ; 

 A blade of silver hair-gi-ass nodding slowly 

 In the soft wind ; the thistle's pinple crown, 

 The ferns, the rushes tall, and mosses lowly, 

 A thorn, a weed, an insect, or a stone, 

 Can thrill me with sensations exquisite — 

 For all are exquisite, and every part 

 Points to the Mighty Hand that fashion'd it." 



It is not alone in its beauty of tint, and in its use to man and animal, 

 that the mallow offers indications of the great Creator's skill. The minute 

 grains of white pollen, or powder, which stud its central column, coming off 

 on our fingers as we touch it, are exquisitely beautiful when examined by 

 the aid of a microscope. Small as they are, their structure is wonderfully 

 organized, each minute particle being, as in several other plants of the 

 Order, a minute globe surrounded with prickles ; or, as Linnteus described 

 it, each grain resembles the wheel of a watch, the pi"ickles giving to its 

 globular form in profile this toothed appearance. This pollen is in an earlier 

 stage contained in the anther, which, as we have stated, is kidney-shaped, and 

 which is like a little box filled with these grains of pollen. The anther of 

 plants is at all times a wondrous object ; sometimes it consists of several 

 cells, but most frequently it is formed of two, and sometimes, as in the 

 Mallow, of but one. When the pollen is ripe, the anthers burst, and dis- 

 charge their contents. The granules of pollen are often oblong, but some, 

 like those of the Portugal dill (AnMhum sdgetum), are cylindrical, and in 

 some plants, as the Virginian spider-wort, they are curved ; others are square 

 or oval, and in the evening primrose the shape is triangular, with the angles 

 so much dilated as to give the sides a convex form ; some, like those of the 

 Mallow, are studded with prickles, and most are furrowed. 



The colour of the pollen of the Mallow is white slightly tinged with lilac, 

 and it varies in different plants to almost every colour except green. It is 

 more often yellow than of any other tint ; but in the tall Avillow herb called 

 French willow the pollen is blue ; in the mullein it is red, and in the tulip 

 black. So wonderfully regular, however, are all the characters of natural 

 objects — even the most minute — that a skilful botanist can exactly discover 

 the class of a plant by examining its pollen with a microscope. The 

 American Journal of Science for June, 1842, gives a very interesting account 



