190 LETTER XV. 



cold weather, where it is protected alike from light 

 and from drying winds, as soon as the snow is melted 

 it springs forth bedecked with the gayest tints imagi- 

 nable ; yellow, and white, and purple, violet, lilac, 

 and sky blue are the usual colours of its flowers ; 

 while its leaves, nursed by the food descending from 

 a thousand rills of the purest waters, and expanded 

 beneath an ever genial and cloudless sky, acquire a 

 green which no gem can excel in depth or bright- 

 ness. It is in those regions only that the Primrose 

 tribe can be studied to the greatest advantage. 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE XV. 



L The Borage Tribe. — A portion of the inflorescence of Violet 

 Alkanet (Ancliusa italica), shewing its gyrate disposition.' — 1. A co- 

 rolla opened, exhibiting the stamens and the scales which close its 

 throat. — 2. A calyx. — 3. The four-lobed ovary, style and stigma. — 

 4. The caljrx of the fruit. — 5. The four-lobed fruit with the withered 

 style still remaining. — 6. One of the seed-like lobes of the fruit 

 divided perpendicularly; a, the part which separated from the recep- 

 tacle; b, the organic apex; c, the organic base: these are inverted 

 in the drawing so that the section may correspond with the position 

 of the lobes in fig. 5. 



n. The Nightshade Tribe. — A twig o^ Black Nightshade 

 (Solanum nigrum). — 1. A corolla laid open; a, the holes through 

 which the pollen is discharged by the anthers. — 2*. The pistil and 

 calyx. — 2**. A horizontal section of the ovary, exhibiting the nume- 

 rous seeds lying in the two cells. — 3. A cluster of ripe fi'uit. — 4. A 

 seed. — 5. The same divided perpendicularly, shewing the manner 

 in which the embiyo is coiled up. 



