190 OLEACE.ZE. 



in that district \^s of a very light green, and this suggested to 

 him the presence of alum. The seeds of the Holly are con- 

 tained in a berry, the scarlet beauty of which I need not 

 describe to you. 



" When I see the Holly berries, 



I can think I hear 

 Merry chimes and carols sweet 



Ringing in my ear. 

 Christmas with its blazing fires 



And happy hearths I see ; 

 Oh! what merry thoughts can cling 



Around the Holly tree !" 



The flowers are small, and of a creamy white, tinged with 

 lilac. The stamens and stigmas are four in number, and the 

 corolla is cut into four segments. The richest quantity of 

 bloom I have ever seen was in the neighbourhood of Hawk- 

 hurst last May. 



The Privet (Ligustrum vulgare), represents the first British 

 family of the OLIVE order. It is a small shrub, with broad 

 lance-shaped leaves, thick-set panicles of white flowers, and 

 black berries. The corolla is divided into four, the stamens are 

 only two, and there is but one stigma. It flowers in July, 

 and abounds on the borders of the Wiltshire downs. We 

 found among its leaves a huge green caterpillar, with beautiful 

 purple bands across it, and a horn upon its tail. The creature 

 had a way of raising itself on its last few pairs of hind legs, 

 and lifting the front part of the body erect in a manner that 

 looked quite threatening. We were afterwards told that it was 

 the caterpillar of the large Privet moth. 



I have the uninteresting bloom of the Ash (Fraxinus ex- 

 celsior), consisting only of brown stamens and stigma, without 

 either calyx or corolla, and opening while the branches are yet 

 naked, so that they have no relief from "foliage. The "keys," 

 as country people call the bunch of long seed-vessels, form a 

 far more interesting object, accompanied as they are with the 

 graceful pinnate leaves. White, in his " History of Selborne," 

 gives an account of a cruel ceremony in which a pollard Ash 



