COLLINSONIA CANADK XSIS. — COLUXSON's FLOWER. 167 



Knit the dark brow and roll the unsteady eye. 

 With sweet concern the pitying,' beauty mourns, 

 And soothes with smile the jeahnis pair by turns.'' 



Nuttall, howcvcM", takes quite a different view of the action of 

 these organs in our plant. According to him, the fair ColHnia 

 — the pistil — soothes neither of the jealous pair, but remains 

 entirely unmoved by their passion. " In this genus," he says, 

 "the stamens are observed alternately to approach the st)-le," 

 which, of course, is quite the contrary of Dr. Darwin's observa- 

 tion. 



It is worth noting in this connection that the ancestor of the 

 chief exponent of the prevailing belief that self-fertilization is 

 shunned by the higher-class plants, the present illustrious Dar- 

 w^in, should have imagined this supposed motion of the pistil to 

 be an especial contrivance to insure self-fertilization. The writer 

 of this has never been able to see this action of either the sta- 

 mens or the pistil, nor does any modern author note it. The 

 matured specimen selected for our illustration certainly shows 

 that the flowers do not seed well, even if they should be 

 self-fertilizers, as suggested by the observations of Dr. Darwin 

 and Nuttall. Of the many flowers that have opened, only one 

 seems likely to perfect its seed, as shown by the seed-vessel 

 marked with the Fig. 2 on our plate. Bees visit the flowers 

 freely sometimes ; but although the writer of this has watched 

 their actions closely, he has rarely seen them touch the stigmatic 

 surface. Perhaps if they did, and foreign pollen were applied, 

 the result might be different, and it would be a crood anrument 

 favoring cross-fertilization. 



Medicinally our species is famous. The Indians employed it 

 in curing sores and wounds, and Rafinesque says that among 

 the mountaineers of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the 

 Carolinas, "it is used inwardly and outwardly in many disorders, 

 — outwardly as a poultice, and inwardly as tea for headaches, 

 colics, cramps, dropsy, indigestion, etc." Linn:vus, in Schreber's 

 edition of " Materia Medica," admits the root as a remedv in 



