P isAGh Ee ave 
LIPARIA SPHERICA. 
No order of plants is more strictly natural than that to which the beautiful shrub represented 
in our figure belongs, the Leeum1nosx or Pea-family, a large assemblage distinguished by 
having seeds enclosed in two-valved pods, and very generally characterised by a flower of the 
form which Linneus called papilionaceous, or butterfly-shaped. And yet, few orders exhibit 
a greater variety of habit than we find in this order. The organs of vegetation are infinitely 
varied in the different genera; and even in the essential characters of the fruit and flower 
there are many gradations from the perfectly formed, many-seeded pod, to the single-seeded 
semi-drupe; and from the truly papilionaceous corolla to the rosaceous, or, by a union of the 
petals, to the tubular. Among the leguminous plants with which we are most familiar, what 
wide dissimilarity is there not in appearance between the Clover, the Sweet Pea, and the Rose- 
Acacia or Locust-tree ; and yet when we examine the flowers of these plants with a little care, 
and compare them together, there is manifestly the closest relationship between them. Entering 
a conservatory filled with Australian Acacias we find shrubs and trees of a somewhat different 
type, having pods indeed like the Pea, but with yellow pencils or tassels for flowers; and, 
instead of the fernlike leaves which we associate with the idea of an Acacia, clothed with rigid 
and often spiny spurious leaves, of strange shapes, sometimes resembling leaves of holly, or of 
willow, or imitating swords, sickles, hatchets, or other uncouth forms. Again, passing from the 
conservatory to the stove, we encounter in that tropical temperature, the Cassta, the Bauhinia 
and many others in which the characteristic fernlike foliage and the pods are united again, but 
whose flowers are made up of several equal petals like those of the rose. Thus it is that 
Leguminous plants assume different aspects as we trace them through different regions. And 
were we to pursue the enquiry into the tropical forests of South America, we should find 
examples of this order among the loftiest forest trees, with trunks sixty feet in circumference, 
and wood of the hardest and closest texture. One of these giants contrasts strangely with a 
minute annual clover or medick; and shows us what wide extremes the limits of a natural 
family admit of. 
Between seven and eight hundred species of Leguminose are found at the Cape of Good 
Hope. Among them are examples of almost all the remarkable forms of the order; but by 
far the greater number belong to the same division as our wild Broom (Genista)—the humble 
mountain plant which gave its name to the Royal line of Plantagenet (Planta-genista). Not 
that there is any true Genista found wild in South Africa; but they are several genera peculiar 
to the Cape, with the habit and many of the characters of the Broom. The most extensive of 
these genera is Aspalathus, which contains over a hundred species, some of which are twiggy 
like the Broom, others spiny like the Furze, and almost all thickly studded with golden blossoms. 
Our Liparia spherica belongs to a neighbouring genus. It forms a small, but rigid bush, 
with numerous simple branches, closely covered with hard, dark-green, very smooth and 
