OUR COMPOUND FLOWERS. 125 



and examples of a vegetable irritability, — and it may be so, — ^but it 

 would be well to inquire if the whole of them may not be dependent 

 on a minute vesicular structure of the parts that necessarily subject 

 them to the laws of endosmose and exosmose*. 



With a few exceptions, such as the Daisy, the Antennaria, the 

 Corn-Marygold, the Blue-bottle, the Hieracium pilosella, and the 

 Solidago, our syngenesious flowers possess little beauty, and many of 

 them are plain and uncomely. But there is a good deal to admire in 

 their structure, and were we disposed to believe that Nature geome- 

 trizeth in all things, and follows a quincuncial order, we might here 

 find many proofs of the hypothesis. Sir Thomas Browne points out, 

 with the keen observation of a man on his hobby, that this mystical 

 quincunx is elegantly observable in the squamous heads of Scabious, 

 Knapweed, and Jacea ; and the same is more or less marked " in the 

 pricks, sockets, and impressions of the seeds" upon the surface of 

 the common receptacle of the entire order. " In such a grove," he 

 says, " do walk the little creepers about the head of the Burr. And 

 such an order is observed in the aculeous prickly plantation upon the 

 heads of several common Thistles, remarkably in the notable palisadoes 

 about the flower of the Milk-thistle ; and he that inquireth into the 

 little bottom of the Globe-thistle, may find that gallant bush arise 

 from a scalp of like disposure." Cyrus-Garden, p. 34. — From the 

 contemplation of this orderly disposition, if the florist will pass to the 

 examination of the individual florets, he will find that the division of 

 parts into 5 is still predominant ; and he will find too, that, if the 

 entire flower is mean, these component florets show an admirable 

 beauty in their miniature forms. As an example, let us select the 

 florets from the Butter-bur (Plate VI. fig. 1) and observe how the 

 long tubular corolla expands so prettily into its cup, cut into five 

 equal segments turned back with easy elegance, and tinted vrith a 

 delicate rose-colour that shows the cylinder of purplish anthers to 

 advantage ; while, like a memorial column, the white style raises 

 itself from their centre. And the microscope unfolds new beauty ; 

 for the surface of this clubbed style under it appears softly clothed 

 with murications, probably intended to retain the pollen powder, 

 which is partly of a globular, and partly of an oval shape, but muri- 

 cated like the style itself. The silken threads that spring from the 

 base of the floret are armed with forward-pointed spines which seem 

 to be arranged in a kind of whorl. 



The seeds of the Syngenesia have been generally quoted in illus- 

 tration of the pains that Nature takes to " scalef" her species, and 



* See Golding Bird's Essays on the divergence of the cut stems of Plants 

 in Charlesworth's Magazine of Natural History, vol. i. pp. 67 and 180. 



t I have used the word purposely, as it permits me to add one more ex- 

 planation of a vexed passage in Shakespere : — 



" But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture 

 To scale't a httle more." — Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. i. 



That is, as I think, to " disperse " or to diffuse the fable a little more, — 



