PASQUE-FLOWER. 177 



and frequently accompany the ascending 

 stem, when it emerges to the light, chang- 

 ing from white to a light green tint; and, 

 as if unwillinff to foreofo the duties of their 

 subterraneous life, they perform occasionally 

 the office of leaves for a short time to 

 the infant plant, and then decay. This pe- 

 culiarity is very obvious in the garden bean. 

 The heart, or corculum, is very elegant in 

 its expansion, changing often from a feath- 

 ery appearance to a tuft of leaves, which 

 gradually rises upwards, and when the na- 

 ture of the plant renders unnecessary the 

 farther ministration of the seed-lobes, it 

 accompanies the stem. The heart, too, 

 contains within itself the rudiments of fu- 

 ture leaves; equally in the minuter as the 

 larger kinds, in the garden bean and acorn 

 as in the chervil and the hemp, the tobacco, 

 of which one hundred and twelve weigh 

 only a single grain, and the white poppy, 



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