32 WILD FLO WEES. 



blank when it should be tilled with laborious and 

 unwavering care whether it be in the moral or 

 the physical world should strike the heart with 

 emotions of sorrow, or disgust. If, however, in- 

 stead of contemplating the morass, as a whole a 

 thing which man's labour should displace we ex- 

 amine, with patient interest, into its fastnesses, 

 we find that it nourishes things as bright and 

 beautiful, in their particular way, as those of more 

 favoured regions of the earth. There, amidst deli- 

 cate forms innumerable, the sundew sparkles with 

 ruby points, near emerald moss-tufts of a bril- 

 liancy unsurpassed elsewhere ; while, to complete 

 this vegetable emulation of the gems of the mine, 

 " the amethyst-like Pingulcula rears its transparent 

 stalks/' and almost eclipses, in all but scent, the 

 much-loved violet. 



The very curious appendages with which the leaves 

 of the sundew are furnished, consisting of pellucid 

 glands thickly scattered over the upper surface, and 

 each exuding a sparkling dew-drop from its ruby 

 tip, have given rise not only to the English name of 

 sundew, but to the appellation of the plant in most 

 countries ; almost all its names, as will be seen by a 

 reference to the synonymes given at the head of our 

 description, signifying the same thing. The name 

 assigned to it by our botanists is derived from the 

 Greek, and simply means dew, but the Latin ros- 

 solis is equivalent to the others, which are founded 

 on an opinion whether existing in fact, or not, I 

 cannot tell that these dew-drops only appear on 

 the plant in the day-time, when the sun is above the 



