ILLUSTRATIONS. 



101 



the flowers, broad and hairy at the base, narrowed into a thin 

 prickly point. The flowers are small, pale lilac, each inserted 

 in a small angular involucel having the appearance of an outer 

 calyx with a small thickened border ; the calyx has a small 

 cup-shaped border appearing above the involucel, and the 

 monopetalous corolla is four-lobed and oblique. The flowers 

 have four free stamens inserted in the tube of the corolla, 

 and the ovary becomes a dry single-seeded fruit, crowned by 

 the border of the calyx. The united bases of the opposite 

 leaves of this plant form a hollow around the stem, in which 

 water collects, and hence the plant was called dipsakos, or 

 thirsty; hence also it obtained the name of Venus's Bath. 

 Superstitious persons have fancied that the water thus col- 

 lected from the rains and dews was good for bleared eyes. 



In the Musk Thistle ^ we have a further example of the 

 Composite family, not however belonging to the same divisions 

 as the Daisy and Dandelion already noticed. These respec- 

 tively belong to the Corymbiferous and Ligulate groups, but 

 the Thistles belong to a very distinct subdivision of the 

 family, which has been appropriately called Thistleheads. This 

 latter is distinguished by the florets being all tubular, and by 

 the style being swollen below its two arms. The Musk 

 Thistle is a biennial plant, producing in the first year a spread- 

 ing tuft of very pretty oblong-lanceolate sinuately pinnatifid 

 leaves, the edges of which are prickly-toothed — and very 

 sharply prickled too, like other Thistles. In the second year, 

 the branching stem grows up two or three feet high, furnished 

 with smaller pinnatifid prickly leaves, whose edges are decur- 

 rcnt, that is, running down the stem, forming narrow prickly 

 wings. The flower-heads are terminal, large, drooping, and 

 handsome. The involucres are globular, formed of numerous 



* Carduns nutans — Plate 15 A. 



