THE RESEDA. 39 



Our savants are desirous that all flowers should resemble 

 those which they diy in their herbals — ^horrible cemeteries, in 

 •which flowers are buried with ostentatious epitaphs. One of 

 these savants looks at the plant, and says, " That is a capparis, 

 of the family of the capparides, without stipulse. The petals 

 of the corolla alternate with the sepals of the chalice ; the 

 filaments are hypogenous ; the pistil is stipitated, and formed 

 of the union of three carpels, the ovules attached to the 

 three trophosperms; its seeds are often reniform, and have 

 an endospermis' " 



"Gently! gently!" cries the other savant ; "the reseda is 

 not a capparis. The reseda is an euphorbia, according to 

 Mr. Lindley, and a cistus, in my opinion. The chalice is a 

 common involucrum; the ovary globular, seldom unilocu- 

 lar; the seeds are enveloped in a fleshy endospermis." 



" I admit the endospermis," replies the other savant, 

 " and I allow that it is fleshy j but 1 maintain that the reseda 

 belongs to the capparides. I will further say, that it shows 

 but little of a botanist to make an euphorbiaceous plant 

 of it." 



But let us stop! We should tear onr sweet mignonette 

 to tatters. Listen to a savant upon another subject. 



He is speaking of the guimauve, or marsh-mallow, a little 

 creeping plant, with round leaves and rose-coloured blossoms, 

 that you will have great trouble to find in the grass. Listen ! 



" The chalice is monocephalous ; the anthers are reniform 

 and unilocular; the pistil is composed of several carpels, 

 often verticillated ; the fruits form a plurilocular capsule, 

 which opens in as many valves as there are monosperm, or 

 polysperm cells ; the seeds are generally without endospermis, 

 with foliaceous cotyledon^." 



You understand nothing of this, though, perhaps, if you 

 have an extraordinary verbal memory, you may retain some 

 of the words. Then request the savant to tell you something 

 about the baobab. 



The Baobab, or Adansonia, is the largest tree in the world; 

 it may be taken at a distance for a forest ; its trunk is often 

 a hundred feet in circumference ; it is asserted that some exist 

 in Senegal that are five thousand years old. 



Hear the savant give a description of a baobab : — 



