52 FETID HELLEBORE. 



tendency to preference of nourishment as do the sensi- 

 tive tribes ; and some districts, that vary a little in their 

 component parts or position from those adjoining, will 

 present an individual or a race that is not found in 

 another : the common product of the North or of the 

 East is treasured in the Herbarium of the southern or 

 western botanist ; we can boast but few, yet we have 

 some of these capricious children of the soil. 



The fetid hellebore (helleborus foetidus) is not a com- 

 mon plant with us, but we find it sparingly in one or 

 two places ; and though a plant indigenous to Britain, 

 yet it is not improbable that it has strayed from cultiva- 

 tion, and become naturalized in many of the places in 

 which we now find it. Its uses as an herb of celebrity 

 for some complaints of cattle occasioned its being fos- 

 tered in many a cottage-garden long since erased, where 

 the good wife was the simple doctress of the village, 

 when perhaps mortality was not more extensive than .in 

 these days of greater pretension and display. Modern 

 practice yet retains preparations of this herb, but it ap- 

 pears that, from the powerful manner in which they act, 

 great discretion is necessary in their administration. 

 This hellebore is one of our few plants that present us 

 with a dull, unsightly, unpleasing blossom. We have 

 many with a corolla so small as to be little noticed ; but 

 this plant, and the fetid iris (iris foetidissima), produce 

 blossoms, that would generally be considered as dark- 

 some and cheerless. There is no part of a vegetable 

 which we usually admire more than its flowers, for that 

 endless variety of colors, shades, forms, and odors, with 

 which they are endowed ; yet the utility of the blossom 

 is by no means obvious. Linnaeus calls the corolla the 

 arras, the tapestry of the plant ; and we are perfectly 

 sensible that the blossom in very many instances is es- 

 sential in various \vays to securing and perfecting the 

 germen; that it often contains the food of multitudes 

 of insects, which feed on the pollen, the honey, or the 

 germen; and that the odor emitted by it leads fre- 

 quently various creatures to the object in request, and 

 by their agency the fecundation and perfecting of the 

 seeds are often effected : but we are astonished at the 



