60 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. ' 



have been among roses, clematis, begonias, and 

 rhododendrons. 



But it is not the florist only who has been 

 helping on the cause of botanical science at home. 

 Within the last few years the botanists, or rather 

 perhaps the naturalists, have been increasingly 

 busy among both the English field and garden 

 flowers. The old botanists indeed had examined 

 with every minuteness the structure and economy 

 of the blossoms, had counted the stamens and 

 the 'pistils, and known the origin of the swelling 

 of the seed-vessel. And what Linnaeus had 

 systematized, Erasmus Darwin endeavoured to 

 turn into a romance. Science was to be made 

 popular in a long didactic poem, and The Loves 

 of the Plants was the curious result. But to treat 

 the various organs of a plant as if they were 

 human beings and endowed with human passions, 

 was obviously too far-fetched a conceit to give real 

 pleasure, and it was not wonderful that Mathias, 

 and many others, should have laughed at those, who 



" In sweet tetrandrian monogynian strains 

 Pant for a pistil in botanic pains." 



