LETTER XVI. 



THE MINT TRIBE — THE FOXGLOVE TRIBE. 



(Plate Xri.) 



One of the easiest of all natural orders to recog- 

 nise is the Borage tribe, which formed the subject 

 of part of my last letter. Its coiled or gyrate inflo- 

 rescence and four-lobed ovary are so peculiar, as never 

 to escape the observation of the most careless in- 

 quirer. There is only one way in which a mistake 

 may be made by a beginner, and that I shall now 

 teach you how to avoid. 



Of all the weeds of common occurrence, that which 

 is perhaps the most universally distributed, and which 

 appears by the strength of its constitution the best 

 adapted to flourish in situations where little else can 

 grow, is Black Horehound (Ballota nigra). Even by 

 the sides of the high road, in the midst of the hot- 

 test and dryest weather, when it becomes literally 

 cased in a thick coating of dust, that plant flowers, 

 regardless of the elements and their effects. You 

 may know it by its dull dusty disagreeable smell, its 

 roundish indented wrinkled dull grey leaves, placed 

 opposite each other on a square stem, and its whorled 

 clusters of dull purple flowers. The ovary is split 



