Many are the appliances which the Author of Nature has devised to enable perennial plants 
and seeds to resist the vicissitudes of such a climate, and to preserve vitality through the long 
droughts and fierce heats to which they are subjected. I shall here, however, only mention, 
as a beautiful instance of such care, the manner in which the corm or bulb of the Cape Iridee, 
and specially, of the genus Sparavis, is protected from heat and drought. The bulb consists of 
two parts, a bud, or the rudiments of leaves and flowers, and a fleshy body or very short 
stem, which contains a quantity of prepared nutriment ready to be applied to the growth of the 
bud, when returning moisture shall call forth the active powers of life; but which must be 
kept to a certain extent moist, in order to preserve life in its tissues. This bulb, consisting 
thus of bud and stem, is exposed, often for months together, to a heat of 130° or 150°, to 
which height the temperature of the soil frequently rises during summer; and it is certain 
that no unprotected bud could live through so severe an ordeal. But a protection, as 
efficient as it is beautiful, is provided in numerous coats of network, one outside the other, 
which wrap round the bulb, and interpose between it and the baked soil. This network is - 
formed from the fibrous skeletons of the leaves of the preceding year, and imbibes and retains 
whatever water penetrates to it. And as the net is generally prolonged upwards from the bulb 
to the surface of the soil, its fibres readily catch the rain as it falls, and convey it downwards 
to the bulb. Thus, by a simple arrangement, is life preserved through the dry season, and the 
earliest advantage taken of the return of moisture. 
