CURIOSITIES OF GARDENING. 41 



Gardening, as well as Literature, has its " curi- 

 osities," and a volume might be filled with them. 

 How wonderful, for instance, the sensitive plant 

 which shrinks from the hand of man, the ice-plant 

 that almost cools one by looking at it, the pitcher- 

 plant with its welcome draught, the hair-trigger of 

 the stylidium, and, most singular of all, the car- 

 nivorous " Venus' fly-trap " (Dioncea muscipula) 



" Only think of a vegetable being carnivorous ! " 



which is said to bait its prickles with something 

 which attracts the flies, upon whom it then closes, 

 and whose decay is supposed to afford food for the 

 plant. Disease is turned into beauty in the common 

 and crested moss-rose, and a lusus natures reproduced 

 in the hen-and-chicken daisy. There are phos- 

 phorescent plants, the fire-flies and glow-worms of 

 the vegetable kingdom : there are the microscopic 

 lichens and mosses ; and there is the Kafflesia Arnoldi, 

 each of whose petals is a foot long, its nectary a foot 

 in diameter, and deep enough to contain three gal- 

 lons, and weighing fifteen pounds ! What mimickry 

 is there in the orchisses, and the hare's-foot fern, 

 and the Tartarian lamb (Polypodium Baronyetz *) ! 



* So, we believe, rightly spelt ; though otherwise by Dr. Darwin, 

 whose well-balanced and once-fashionable lines are now so forgotten, 

 that we think our readers will not be sorry to be reminded of their 

 pompous existence : 



" Cradled in snow and fann'd by arctic air, 

 Shines, gentle BAROMETZ ! thy golden hair ; 

 Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends, 

 And round and round her flexile neck she bends ; 



Crops 



