134 Introductory View of the 
Tue sample of pearls that accompanied this letter contained 
three black ones; the rest, hardly worthy of the name of 
pearls, have no none and are duller than those found in the 
common English oyster, and very irregular in form. ‘They may 
be as good to dissolve in sherbet as any, but must be totally 
unfit Ss ornaments. Fine pearls have, however, often been 
found in the Mya (Unio) margaritifera, and sold for jewellery, 
and such must be what the overseer purchases. — Cond. 
Art. VI. An Introductory View of the Linnean System of Plants. 
By Miss Kent, Authoress of Ficra Domeéstica, Sylvan Sketches, 
&e. 
(Continued from p.62.) 
Tue class Heptdndria (distinguis shed by seven stamens) 
is the smallest and the least important of the four-and-tw enty, 
and contains only one British species; a plant called chick- 
weed winter-green (Trientalis europse'a), but seldom met 
with, and possessing little interest but for the botanist, though 
by no means deficient in beauty. The seed is clothed in a 
tunic of lace, and the leaves are elegantly veined. 
That magnificent and stately tree, the horsechestnut (AE’s- 
culus Hippocdstanum), is a visitor from Asia, too well known 
to need description; yet two persons would be likely to 
describe it in very opposite terms: for there are few plants, 
great or small, about which people differ so widely; one 
calls it hendcome and stately, another heavy and clumsy. 
It is certainly ornamental when in leaf, and yet more so in 
the bravery of its blooming thyrses; but, in its winter naked- 
ness, it is like a clumsy living faggot, wholly destitute of 
grace or apparent beauty. I say apparent, for it has hidden 
Ponies, ; to which, perhaps, may be attributed some portion 
of its clumsiness. The buds, which, at a distance, appear 
like so many knobby ends of a bundle of thick sticks, will 
amply repay a careful examination: they are of two kinds, 
the smaller, leaf-buds ; and the larger, flower-buds. A cele- 
brated Garment natu The detached from this tree, in the 
winter season, a flower-bud not larger than a pea, in which 
he could reckon more than sixty flowers. The external 
covering was composed of seventeen scales, cemented together 
by a gummy substance, and protecting from mea iceure the 
down which formed the internal covering of the bud. Having 
carefully removed both the scales and down, he discovered 
four branch leaves surrounding a spike of flowers, and the 
