48 RURAL NOTES-PARISH OF KEA. 



unknown way set off the action of the Puccinia and so promote 

 mildew in wheat. 



Indeed my neighbours, regarding the hard reality of their 

 experience, are not to be moved from their convictions ; and 

 scientific research has been often found to corroborate popular 

 beliefs at the same time that it has helped to unveil the mystery. 



Whether this may come to pass respecting the seemingly close 

 but unhappy relationship between our wheat fields and our 

 Barberry hedges, who can say ? but one wonderful property of 

 the Barberry bush in flower is easily made manifest before the 

 harvest time. 



The stamens are endowed with a marvellous sensibility; 

 and if they be ever so daintily touched with the point of a 

 needle toward the base of the filament, as they lie snugly 

 ensconced in the golden lap of either concave petal, the irritable 

 stamen at once rises from its soft repose, and bending grace- 

 fully forward, its fruitful head closes on the pistil, and after the 

 lapse of a few hours the experiment may be repeated again 

 and again. 



Like the '' armed hand" of Cynosurus Cristatus and the elastic 

 corolla valve of Lolium Perenne this is one of those beautiful 

 and striking arrangements of providence which is calculated "to 

 awaken reflection in the mind of a ploughboy." 



The Barberry petals, when expanded, carry the anthers in 

 their laps so far from the stigma, that they might not perform 

 their office without some peculiar provision. So 'tis when the 

 sun shines brightly on the little stores of golden dust, mounted 

 on each tiny thread of the six stamens, that those threads are 

 most lively and elastic, and 'tis then the roving bee approaches 

 the confines of the richly glowing cup, and agitating the 

 filaments, nature at once accomplishes her ends. 



According to De Candolle the Barberry is found through 

 Europe from Candia to Christiana^ espousing most a limestone 

 soil (though we have no calcareous bottoms in Kea). 



In the north it is a valley plant. In the south it becomes a 

 mountaineer, and finds a habitat in the sterile belt of Mount 

 iEtna, at an elevation of 7500 feet. 



It usually grows with us from 4 to 6 feet high, attaining in 

 Italy the size of a plum tree, and living through two centuries. 



