BOTANY. 



607 



and met with on bogs, moist woods, and sides of 

 mountains where springs ooze out. 

 Cryptogamia. 



Hepaticae. 



The seventh order is ALGVE, containing seventy 

 nine genera, which are chiefly aquatics inhabiting the 

 sea, lakes, and rivers. In the second tribe of this 

 order we find conferva, a numerous genus, and remark- 

 able for its being sooner detected by its colour than 

 its form. The green scum, which so soon appears on 

 a glass of water, or on the surface of moist earth, or 

 on the inside of water vessels, or on stones in brooks, 

 is conferva of one species or other. The greater 

 number of algae inhabit the depths and shallows of 

 the ocean, hence called sea-weeds. 



Crypto|*amia. 



Algae. 



The eighth order is LICHENES, containing all those 

 scaly, ash-coloured substances which giow on rocks, 

 walls, buildings, or stems of trees. They assume 

 very many forms ; some are spread out in thin parch- 

 ment like expansions, others rise from the surface on 

 which they grow, and present shaggy tufts of a hoary 

 appearance. Some of them are the food of animals, 

 Cryptogamia. 



Lichen - rangiferin us 



L. Pixidatus. 



Lichen-rangiferinus being almost the only provision 

 of the reindeer of Lapland ; others are medicinally 

 useful, and a few are used by the dyer. The fruit of 

 the lichens consist of tubercles, or saucer-like bodies, 

 found on the old branches of trees, wooden pales, &c. 

 The ninth and last order is FUNGI, comprising all 

 the mushroom tribes. There are above one hundred 

 and fifty-nine genera, and upwards of one thousand 

 one hundred and fifty-seven species already en the 



published lists ; and no doubt many more exist undis- 

 covered. The major part of the fungi grow on rotten 

 wood, and other decayed vegetable and animal sub- 

 stances. Some of them are eatable, and much used 

 in refined cookery, others poisonous, and much cau- 

 tion is requisite even in choosing those which are 

 allowed to be wholesome. The dry rot in timber is 

 said to be caused by different kinds of fungL 

 Cryptogamia. 



A. Volvaceus. 



A. Campestris. 



In the above figure, the Agaricus volvaceus repre- 

 sents a young: plant bursting through the volva and 

 a mature one, with its lacerated remains round its 

 base ; the volva, in a few species of the Lycoperdon 

 genus, assumes rather a curious and puzzling appear- 

 ance. Splitting into a number of elastic segments, 

 it turns inside out, and becomes the fulcrum of the 

 fungus as iu Lycoperdon coliforme or sessile, as in 

 (least rum multifidum. But in Lycoperdon fornicatum 

 or turret puff-ball, a still more wonderful appearance 

 is presented, in this the volva has a kind of inner 

 lining ; the habit of the outer is to split like the volva 

 of Agaricus volvaceus, the inner as though inflated 

 rebounds upwards, as Lycoperdon coliforme, however 

 both split into four corresponding divisions, the 

 points of these divisions remain in contact, and bear 

 the puff-ball on their summit as may be seen in the 

 figure. 



Geastrum 

 multifidum. 



LycnperdonT 

 coliforme. 



To these twenty-four classes the author of the 

 sexual system add'ed an appendix containing the 

 order Palmae, the flowers of which, in his time, were 

 not sufficiently known to enable him to place them 

 in the proper classes ; this task, however, has been 

 performed by modern botanists, who have distributed 

 the palms among the different classes and orders 

 according to the Linnaaan rules, and where he him- 

 self would have placed them had he been acquainted 

 with their manner of flowering. 



The foregoing is an outline of the sexual system of 

 botany. The annexed delineations of the numbers 

 and dispositions of the sexual parts on which the 

 system is founded, render longer descriptions of the 

 classes and orders unnecessary. For by an atten- 



