IS* Introductory View of the 



The sample of pearls that accompanied this letter contained 

 three black ones ; the rest, hardly worthy of the name of 

 pearls, have no lustre, and are duller than those found in the 

 common English oyster, and very irregular in form. They may 

 be as good to dissolve in sherbet as any, but must be totally 

 unfit for ornaments. Fine pearls have, however, often been 

 found in the Mya (U^nio) margaritifera, and sold for jewellery, 

 and such must be what the overseer purchases. — Co?id, 



Art. VI. An Introductory Vieiv of the Linnean System of Plants. 

 By Miss Kent, Authoress of Flora Domestica, Sylvan Sketches, 

 &c. 



(^Continued from p. 62.) 



The class Heptandria (distinguished by seven stamens) 

 is the smallest and the least important of the four-and -twenty, 

 and contains only one British species ; a plant called chick- 

 weed winter-green (Trientalis europae'a), but seldom met 

 with, and possessing little interest but for the botanist, though 

 by no means deficient in beauty. The seed is clothed in a 

 tunic of lace, and the leaves are elegantly veined. 



That magnificent and stately tree, the horsechestnut (^s- 

 culus Hippocastanum), is a visitor from Asia, too well known 

 to need description ; yet two persons would be likely to 

 describe it in very opposite terms : for there are few plants, 

 great or small, about which people differ so -widely; one 

 calls it handsome and stately, another heavy and clumsy. 

 It is certainly ornamental when in leaf, and yet more so in 

 the bravery of its blooming thyrses ; but, in its winter naked- 

 ness, it is like a clumsy living faggot, wholly destitute of 

 grace or apparent beauty. I say apparent, for it has hidden 

 beauties ; to which, perhaps, may be attributed some portion 

 of its clumsiness. The buds, which, at a distance, appear 

 like so many inobby ends of a bundle of thick sticks, will 

 amply repay a careful examination : they are of two kinds, 

 the smaller, leaf-buds ; and the larger, flower-buds, A cele- 

 brated German naturalist detached from this tree, in the 

 winter season, a flower-bud not larger than a pea, in which 

 he could reckon more than sixty flowers. The external 

 covering was composed of seventeen scales, cemented together 

 by a gummy substance, and protecting from moisture the 

 down which formed the internal covering of the bud. Having 

 carefully removed both the scales and down, he discovered 

 four branch leaves surrounding a spike of flowers, and the 



