93 



O. S. Our Islands boast of more than twenty species of the Rose. Wo 

 have described but two of the commonest. The Downy-leaved Rose and 

 the very Spiny Rose are not rare. They are a difficult tribe for even the 

 experienced botanist, and are known from each other by the prickies, the 

 leaves, and the fruit. Were we to search foreign countries we should find 

 hundreds of species, and yet none whatever have been discovered in tho 

 Southern hemisphere. Our gardens yield us even thousands of different 

 varieties, and both poets of our own days, and the Troubadours of old, 

 have applied to the Rose for some of their most eloquent passages, making 

 its different kinds emblematic of different virtues, and clothing their finest 

 and most delicate sentiments in the still finer imagery of nature. 



BRAMBLE. RUBUS. 



COMMON DEWBERRY. Rubus ccesius. 



Plate 7, fig. 1. 



Stem round. Prickles straight. Leaves of three leaflets. 

 Calyx upright. 



The Dewberry is very much like the Common Blackberry, 

 It differs in the fruit, the grains of which are larger and fewer 

 in number, and ripen rather sooner the leaves have not so 

 many leaflets in them, and they are green underneath. The 

 stem is nearly round, the prickles small and nearly straight, 

 and the calyx incloses the fruit. 



BLACKBERRY, or COMMON BRAMBLE. Rubus f rut icosus. 

 Plate 7, fig. 2. 



Stem cornered. Prickles hooked. Leaves of five leaflets. 

 Calyx bent back. 



Who does not know the Blackberry ? The fruit of it at least, 

 ripening in the autumn, gathered by the peasant boys, and even 

 sold in the London markets for puddings, c. When the frost 

 comes it is spoiled, becoming then sour, unpleasant, and often 

 harbouring little caterpillars. Its flowers are not inelegant, 

 but the rough aud ragged growth of the plants their thorny 

 stems, catching hold of every thing around their long suckers 

 and creeping roots, interfering with and stifling every thing not 

 strong enough or rough enough to struggle through them, have 

 occasioned the Bramble to be likened unto envy and malice, 

 which endeavours to tarnish the purest actions, and to choke 

 the rising prosperity of the wisest and the best. Yet a mind so 

 attuned as to contemplate the bright side of objects and events, 



