242 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



vessel, and is considered moreover as a connecting link be- 

 tween Orchises and Irises : it has slender leafless stalks, 

 with hanging tubular blossoms at the upper end. The 

 Eriocaulon, or Pipe-wort, is also an interesting plant; 

 though spoken of as allied to glumaceous plants, its con- 

 struction shows a higher degree of development ; when 

 magnified, something approaching to the nature of a corolla 

 is visible, in the shape of a little membranous tube within 

 the glumes, enclosing the stamens or pistils, for it is a 

 dioecious plant. Only one species grows in Great Britain, 

 (in lakes in the Isle of Skye) and in the west of Ireland ; 

 but this little grass-like plant, with globular heads of 

 minute white flowers, is very unlike these foreign ones, in 

 which the heads of flowers look like a stiff brush made of 

 long bristles, with a little downy ball stuck on the end of 

 each, the corolla-like tube being fringed with white down. 

 They also grow to a height of from four to six feet in 

 Brazil, and may almost be called small shrubs. " One re- 

 markable circumstance connected with these strange plants 

 is the fact that the greater number of the Brazilian species 

 do not inhabit water, in the manner of our native British 

 one, but grow in the most dry and arid portions of moun- 

 tainous declivities; many others also grow in parched, flat, 



