ILLUSTRATIONS. 353 



always pleasing in habit and foliage, and in the autumnal sea- 

 son becoming decorated with the greenish- white pitcher-shaped 

 flowers of the present season, and the large red strawberry-like 

 fruits produced by the preceding year's flowers, so that, the 

 fruit taking a year to arrive at maturity, the shrub has perfect 

 flowers and ripe fruit all at one time. The Arbutus forms a 

 tall evergreen shrub or bushy tree, sometimes of considerable 

 size, furnished with shortly-stalked, ovate or oblong-lanceolate, 

 toothed leaves, shining on the upper surface. The flowers 

 grow in terminal drooping panicles, consisting of an inferior 

 calyx of five small sepals, an ovoid or pitcher- shaped, waxy- 

 looking corolla, of a greenish-white often tinged with pink, ten 

 enclosed stamens, and a five-celled ovary, which becomes a 

 globular berry, red and granulated on the surface, and thus 

 having, when seen at a distance, considerable resemblance to 

 a strawberry, whence the name of Strawberry Tree. The 

 flowers have been compared by Miss Twamley to pearls : — 



" Small bell-shaped flowers, each of an orient pearl 

 Most delicately modelled, and just tinged 

 With faintest yellow, as if, lit within, 

 There hung a fairy torch in each lamp-flower." 



A beautiful autumnal flower is the Calathian Violet, or 

 Marsh Gentian,"^ a type of the Gentian aceous family. It is a 

 perennial herb, growing in moist heaths and pastures, with an 

 upright stem, six inches to a foot high, bearing opposite ob- 

 long-lanceolate leaves on the lower part of the stem, and linear 

 ones above, all blunt at the point and rather thick in texture. 

 The flowers are nearly sessile, and grow in pairs from the axils 

 of the upper leaves. The calyx is tubular, with five narrow 

 lobes ; and the corolla has a narrowly-bell-shaped tube an inch 

 and a half long, without hairs in the throat, and a five-lobed 



* Gentiana Pneumonanthe — Plate 23 C. 



2 A 



