12 BANUNCULACEjE. 



The wild Clematis, or Traveller's Joy, represents the first 

 family in the Eanunculus order. It is an elegant climbing 

 shrub, bearing numerous flowers with a calyx of four parch- 

 ment-coloured sepals, no corolla, numerous stamens and car- 

 pels, which latter become adorned with a long feathery plume, 

 so that the seed-tufts form an even more elegant object than 

 the flowers. Such, at least, was Bishop Mant's opinion 



"The Traveller's Joy, 

 Most beauteous when its flowers assume 

 Their autumn form of feathery plume." 



I have gathered this plant near Warminster in Wilts, and 

 Fanny has specimens from Devonshire ; I have also observed 

 it in travelling along the South-Eastern Railway. But it was 

 in the lanes about Ross in Herefordshire that I found it in the 

 greatest beauty, throwing its frail branches from the sup- 

 porting arms of trees on the one side, to the tall hedge on the 

 other, and converting the deep lane into a cloistered aisle rich 

 in floral tracery. Its leaves are composed of five leaflets. 

 The flowers appear in July, and the whole shrub is poisonous. 

 (Plate!., fig. I}. 



The Meadow Rue (Thalictrum), the next family in the order, 

 is also without corolla. Its four or five sepals are very in- 

 significant, but its clusters of yellow anthers, disposed freely 

 along its branched flower-stalk, have a light appearance, and 

 contrast agreeably with its twice-divided (bi-pinnate) dark 

 green leaves. I found the Greater Meadow Hue last July at 

 Mackershaw, a part of the grounds adjoining those of Studley, 

 upon the property of Lord De Grey and Ripon. It grew upon 

 a shady bank, at the foot of which a pretty stream flows. 



There are an alpine Meadow Hue, a common Meadow Hue, 

 and a lesser species, all occasionally found in more or less 

 alpine meadows; but we have none of us succeeded in pro- 

 curing these. 



"We have all specimens of the Anemone, or Wind-Flower. 

 This represents the third family of the order. Here, again, 



