2 SPRING FLOWERS. 



that the thick tufts of modest blossoms show "the rathe 

 primrose '^ in its fullest beauty, we do well to be thankful for 

 the earnest which it gives us of the Flora of the new-born year. 

 This well-known favourite flower, besides illustrating the 

 Primulaceous family, will afford us a general botanical lesson, 

 ere we pass on to notice other heralds of the spring. Gather 

 one of the flowers which are snugly nestled amongst the broad 

 and wrinkled leaves, and at the end of its slender stalk will be 

 seen a narrow green five-pointed five-angled funnel, which is 

 the calyx or flower-cup, the outermost of the series of parts 

 which constitute the flower, and which in most flowers, being 

 green, may be readily distinguished. AVithin this stands the 

 corolla, the yellow attractive part of the flower. In this case, 

 if gently pulled, it will be found to come away all in one, 

 and hence it is called monopetalous, or consisting of one petal, 

 the parts of which it is constituted having, as it were, cohered 

 to form this one piece. This is the condition in which the 

 corolla is found throughout the Monopp:tals, one of the larger 

 groups in which plants are classified. Sometimes these Mo- 

 nopetals are very irregular in form, but in the Primrose we 

 have an example of one which is perfectly regular. Let us 

 see of what it consists : — first, there is a long slender tube, 

 which is straight ; then there is a broad flat expanded part or 

 limb, and that consists of five lobes or segments of similar 

 size and form, and spreading equally, so that we may infer 

 that the corolla is here formed of five equal coherent parts. 

 We have thus a corolla which is perfectly regular or sym- 

 metrical in plan. The particular form a corolla assumes 

 has, in most cases, a particular name; that of the Primrose 

 is called hypocrateriform, or salver-shaped, but other regular 

 monopetalous forms will be found by-and-by, in summer, in 

 the funnel-shaped corollas of the Convolvulus, or the bell- 



