FETID HELLEBORE. 67 



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 fcetidus) is not a 

 common 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 cultivation, 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 fostered in many a cot- 

 tage 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 prac- 

 tice 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 adminis- 

 tration. 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 fcetidissima), produce blossoms, that would 

 generally be considered as darksome and cheerless. 

 There is no part of a vegetable which we usually 

 admire more than its flowers, for that endless variety 

 of colours, shades, forms, and odours, with which 

 they are endowed ; yet the utility of the blossom is 

 by no means obvious. Linnaeus calls the corolla 



F2 



