WILD FLO WEES. 



bined with an acid, a good yellow. The same colour 

 is produced by boiling the dried plant with alum, 

 and it is thus used for dyeing woollen yarn by the 

 country people. Combined with oil of turpentine, 

 and linseed oil, this juice also furnishes an excellent 

 red varnish, which is frequently used by upholsterers 

 for colouring woods. 



As before shewn, a part of the plants of the order 

 Hypercacece are tropical ; these, however, are few ; 

 yet their distribution is pretty nearly universal both 

 as to station and locality, though they occur most 

 abundantly in the cooler districts of Asia and Europe. 

 Almost the whole of the order have yellow flowers ; 

 in fact I believe the H. cochinchinense, or red- 

 flowered Hypericum to be the single exception to 

 this rule. 



With the golden stars of all our own species, the 

 Eurinllys, or golden herb, of the Welsh, the reader 

 is probably familiar. 



The general favourite in this tribe is the bright 

 and pretty little trailing St. Johns-wort (H. humi- 

 fusum), which creeps over dry and desolate districts, 

 on arid stone walls, on boggy pastures, or on broken 

 and gravelly ground, as if all places were alike to it, 

 so it may but weave its slender stems and diminu- 

 tive golden stars into the " fair tapestry" that clothes 

 the earth. 



Yet the mere question of beauty may be disputed 

 with the upright St. Johns-wort (H. pulchrum), 

 whose rigid branches are clothed with beautiful rosy- 

 tipped blossom-buds ; or with the common or per- 

 forated St. John's-wort (H. perforatum), of which a 



