THE BLACK BKYONY. 



Tamus communis. Nat. Ord., Diosco- 

 reacetK. 



Y no means conspicuous as re- 

 gards its flower, the present plant 

 will probably be yet well known 

 to most of our readers to all 

 who, with any appreciation of 

 the beauties of nature, have wan- 

 dered along our hedgerows in the 

 long days of summer for the 

 foliage of the black bryony is 

 one of the most graceful and 

 most ordinary draperies that 

 fringe and festoon the plants of 

 the hedge or copse. The leaves 

 are ordinarily very considerably 

 larger than those the exigencies 

 of our space would here allow us 

 to represent ; a breadth of six inches or so would probably 

 be a fair average for an ordinarily developed leaf, and those 

 we have selected have therefore been taken from near the 

 end of the spray. The long trailing stems are thickly 

 covered with the great heart-shaped leaves, and one of its 

 most beautiful features, noticeable on pulling down some 

 six feet of it from its attachment, is the delicate gradation 



