WILD FLOWEKS. 



dwindles, till it dies, in the more sophisticated soil 

 of the garden. 



More beautiful in the growth of the plant, though 

 not its rival in the blossom, is the little ivy- leaved 

 bell-flower (Campanula Jiederacea), of whose grace- 

 ful wreaths an engraving is given, and which so 

 beautifully festoons the damp hollows of mountains 

 in Cornwall, Wales, and other western parts of 

 our island, as it does the clefts of the rocky 

 Pyrenees. This plant is very interesting to the 

 botanist and the geographer, from the circumstance 

 that while in, other respects, it agrees with the 

 division of campanulas, which are peculiar to the 

 northern hemisphere, it resembles in the opening 

 of its seed-capsules the Wahlenburgice* which 

 division is confined, as M. Alphonse de Candolle 

 remarks, to the southern hemisphere. 



Perhaps the best known of our campanulas is 

 the Canterbury-bell, or steeple-bells, which, from 

 the size and beauty of its blossoms, as well as its 

 patience under both cultivation and neglect, is fre- 

 quently introduced in garden culture ; and which, 

 formerly, from its abounding in the neighbourhood 

 of Canterbury, as well as in other parts of Kent, 

 was gathered by pilgrims to that shrine, and trea- 

 sured in evidence of the task they had completed ; 



* Schrader places it, though erroneously, in the last divi- 

 sion. The distinction consists in the opening of the capsules, 

 which, in the Wahlenburgice, takes place by the dehiscence of 

 the upper, or free part of the capsule, the inferior portion re- 

 maining attached. In the others the whole capsule dehisces 

 by lateral fissures. 



