LETTER XXXV. 



THE IIORSE-CHESNUT TRIBE THE WALNUT TRIBE. 



Plate XXXVI. 



You must have often admired the Horse-chesnut 

 tree, either when rising in solitary beauty on the broad 

 greensward of a highly cultivated park, or when, in 

 the form of an avenue, great numbers of those trees 

 combine into high banks of deep green foliage, and 

 gayly tinted flowers. Let us take this plant as our 

 next subject of examination, for which purpose we will 

 select the rose-coloured species (^sculus rosea, or 

 camea, Plate XXXVI. 1.). 



Its leaves, you see, are regularly opposite each other 

 on the branches, and are divided into several toothed 

 lobes, which all proceed from one common point at the 

 top of a strong round foot-stalk. The flowers appear 

 in compact, erect, stiff" panicles, at the ends of the 

 branches. Their bractes are small, and quickly wither 

 awav, falling off", and leaving a scar behind them. 

 Their calyx is a fleshy, smooth, reddish cup, divided 

 at the edge into five unequal, oblong, blunt lobes. The 

 petals are four only ; their claw is long and channelled, 

 and inserted below a one-sided, wrinkled, inconspi- 

 cuous disk {jig. 2. a.) ; their limb is oblong, crumpled, 

 crisped, of a bright yellowish red colour, changing 



