PEA AND BEAN TRIBE 187 



" And yet no warrior cresset thou, 



A higher, liolier spell is thine ; 

 Sign of her early faith, the Church 



Still claims thee for her hallow'd shrine ; 

 Symhol to her of mystic truth. 



Link of the golden chain first given ; 

 Dew-drop embosoming a star. 



Silent, but eloquent of Heaven. 



" Well may the child of Erin deem 



His Shamrock precious in his eyes ; 

 Its spell can wake the hidden spring, 



Bid Hope from Memory arise ; 

 And wliisper that the ' Isle of Saints ' 



Shall know a purer sanctity, 

 Wlien Glory shall illume the land, 



And Truth shall make her children free." 



The White Clover is very general throughout Europe, but is not so in 

 North America. Mr. Lyell, who saw it growing in abundance near New 

 Orleans, on the banks of the Mississippi, says, " Yet it is not a native of 

 Louisiana, and some botanists doubt whether any of the English species, now 

 growing wild in this State, are indigenous." The power of vegetating, after 

 having many years existed in a dormant state, is not peculiar to the White 

 Clover. Several seeds have been known to do so in a wonderful manner, 

 and though the statement that wheat found enveloped in the mummy cases 

 afterwards germinated is now known to be erroneous, yet some Avell- 

 authenticated instances prove that seeds have a wondrous power of retaining 

 their vitality. Tournefort has recorded a case in which beans that had been 

 kept a hundred years grew when planted ; and Wildenow mentions one of 

 a sensitive plant, in which the seed had been kept sixty years. Mr. Babington 

 related to the British Association an instance in which M. Fries, of Upsala, 

 succeeded in growing a species of hawkweed (Hieraciwn), after it had been 

 in a herbarium for fifty years. Dr. Cleghorn states, that after clearing or 

 burning down the forests of India, there invariably springs up a new set 

 of plants, which were not known there before, but the seeds of which must 

 have been lying in the soil. So in Virginia, the thorn-apple is called 

 "fireweed," because it rises on spots where the fire has levelled the forest trees. 

 Professor Henslow, during the year 1850, planted several seeds which had 

 been sent to the committee of the British Association appointed to report on 

 this subject. Two plants of the leguminous tribe grew from seeds, one of 

 Avhich had been kept for seventeen, and the other for twenty years ; and, 

 after much examination of the subject, the Professor concludes, that the 

 seeds of plants of this order have a greater power than others of retaining 

 the germinating principle. 



* * Legumes one or two seeded ; standard falling off, or remaining unaltered ; 



calyx not inflated. 



2. Common Purple or Red Clover {T. pratMse). — Flowers in dense 

 roundish oblong heads ; calyx hairy ; its bristle-like divisions half as long as 

 the corolla ; stipules broad, terminating abruptly in a bristle-point ; leaflets 

 broad, oval, or inversely heart-shaped, notched or entire, often marked with 

 a white crescent-shaped spot. Plant perennial. The field of Clover may 



24—2 



