1148 SPARGANIUM. [CLASS XXI. ORDER 11, 
presence of the Almighty in the grand display of might and 
power in the more stupendous works of His creation; and he who 
collects this little Zostera, nurtured in the bosom of “the Great 
Deep,” will not the less recognise in this humble plant, the object 
of his search, the presence of that Being who is here felt to be pre- 
siding over the awful abyss, the semblance of Eternity. 
“Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form 
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 
Calm or convulsed—in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
Tcing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving ;—boundless, endless, and sublime— 
The image of Eternity—the throne 
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone 
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.” 
Byron, Childe Harold's Pilg., canto. 4., stanz, 83. 
ORDER III. 
TRIAN'DRIA. 3 STAMENS. 
GENUS V. SPARGA'NIUM.—Linn. Bur-reed. 
Nat. Ord. TypuHa'crx. Juss. 
Gen. Coan. Flowers in naked globose heads. Barren flowers with 
a single perianth, of three pieces and six stamens, the anthers 
wedge-shaped. Fertile flowers with a single perianth, of three 
pieces, surrounding a solitary superior ovary. Jruit sessile, 
single seeded—Name o7%pyavov, a little band, or swathing 
clothes, in allusion to the long band-like leaves, similar to the 
bandage used in the South for swathing young children, rolling 
round the legs and body, so that they cannot move, causing 
them to look more like bundles than living children. 
1. S. ramo'sum, Huds. (Fig. 1380.) Branched Bur-reed. Leaves 
triangular at the base, their sides concave; common flower stalk 
branched ; stigma linear. 
English Botany, t. 744.—English Flora, vol. iv. p. 74.—Hooker, 
British Flora, ed. 4. vol. i. p. 380.—Lindley, Synopsis, p. 247. 
Root with long branched fibres. Stem erect, stout, smooth, an- 
gular, about three feet high, terminating in several flowering 
branches, the lower branches with long leafy bractea, sheathing at 
‘the base. Leaves long, linear, sword-shaped, striated, smooth, the 
radical ones angular, concave, keeled, and enclosing the others at the 
