i8 



motto by the members of a Natural History Society. Yet it 

 is doubtless known to you all, and may serve as a " shocking 

 example" of the state into which some people fall, who neglect 

 to use their senses. Much more than simple " yellow prim- 

 roses" are these blossoms to us. I might enlarge upon them 

 as the flowers of childhood, round which cluster many " sunny 

 memories" of our early days, that might otherwise have been 

 forgotten ; as members of the happy careless hours when 

 earth was ever unfolding new treasures and filling our minds 

 with delight at its luxuriousness of beauty — the 



" Time when, meadow, grove, and stream, 

 The earth, and every common sight, 



To us did seem. 

 Apparelled in celestial light, 



The glory and the freshness of a dream. 



And again I might dwell upon them as above all others the 

 flowers of spring, bright aud happy messengers, coming with 

 clear blue skies in January and February to tell us of the 

 wealth of form and colour that will shortly dazzle our eyes 

 as the bleak days get fewer, and at last disappear. But this 

 would be too sentimental ; we must look deeper into Nature 

 than this, and derive a still greater intellectual feast from a 

 knowledge of the mysteries of life that lie hidden in the 

 Primrose. We discover at once, from the venation of the 

 leaves, that the Primrose belongs to the exogenous order of 

 plants, these veins forming a network all over the leaf, and 

 not running parallel from one end to the other, like those in 

 a lily leaf. We notice, moreover, that there is no peduncle or 

 stem here : you may express surprise at this, seeing so many 

 blossoms springing up from the root, each one at the head of 

 -a stalk. But these stalks are pedicels or secondary flower 

 stalks, like those which spring from the head of a Cowslip 

 stalk, and if you cut through a root just below where it emerges 

 from the ground, you will notice that all these pedicels spring 

 from one circling line marking the real stem, which in this 

 case, is to a certain extent suppressed, or rather arrested in its 

 growth. Occasionally, owing to certain circumstances, this 

 peduncle shoots up to some height, carrying the pedicels with 

 it; then we get the variety commonly called the Oxlip, though 

 not the true species of that name. To this I shall refer again 

 presently. 



