AND ORNAMENTAL TREATMENT. 25 



details are as follows : — Figs. 105, 106, side views of the flower : in the first case the sepaloid 

 segment of the perianth being the central mass : in the second, the petaloid. It will be noticed 

 that the outer or sepaloid segments have a conspicuous series of striped markings upon them, the 

 inner segments being nearly, but not quite, free from them : this is seen more clearly in fig. 1 1 1. 

 Fig. 107 is the graceful form of the bud. Fig. 112, the bulb. The remaining views are plans, fig. 

 109, showing the opening bud ; fig. 1 10, the form taken by the flower when incipient decay causes 

 the curling over of the parts ; while in fig. 1 1 1 we have an exterior or underneath view of the 

 flower at its fullest expansion. 



PLATE 12. 



" The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide 



Among the bearded bear, 

 I turn'd the weeder-chips aside, 



And spared the symbol dear." — Burns. 



" Then cullet she all flowers that on field, 

 Discerning all their fashions and effeirs ; 

 Upon the awful Thistle she beheld 

 And saw him kippit with a bush of spears j 

 Considering him so able with the weirs, 

 A radius crown of rubies she him gave. 

 And said, — ' In field go forth, and fend the lave.' " 



— Dunbar : the " Thrissill and the Rois.^' 



The Spear Plum Thistle (Carduus lanceolatus) is one of our most ornamental species. It 

 grows abundantly in Britain, and may be met with ordinarily by our hedge-sides, where its height 

 and numerous heads of large purple flowers render it a very conspicuous plant. The stem is 

 winged, as it is botanically termed, by the prolongation of the leaf forms down the stem ; and the 

 leaves have numerous lobes, each being terminated by a sharp prickle. The bracts surrounding 

 the flower-head are simple in form, not branched, as in the C. Marianus, with a lateral fringing 

 of points. The plant is found in flower throughout the whole Summer. The Thistle has been 

 largely employed in ornamental art : in some cases clearly for its own inherent beauty : in others 

 as clearly from its historic and heraldic associations. A very beautiful example of it may be seen 

 in a square panel in the Cathedral of Bruges, and again in a moulding on the tomb of Don 

 Juan II., in that building; a good crocket at Evreux ; a bracket at Sens ; an especially beautiful 

 running moulding at Miraflores ; numerous wooden panels (Gothic carving) in the South Kensing- 

 ton Museum ; on the monument of Mary Queen of Scots, in Westminster Abbey ; examples at 

 Stirling Castle, Linlithgow, and Holyrood. The Thistle, we need scarcely say, has been adopted 

 as the badge of Scotland ; but great uncertainty seems to exist, both as to what species may be 

 considered the true heraldic Thistle, or on what ground it was originally chosen as the national 

 emblem. The Thistles found sculptured on monuments are too conventional in character to 

 afford any clue to the natural species from which we may assume they were originally derived ; 

 hence a wide field has been opened for antiquarian speculation. Some authorities are prepared 

 to accept the present species as most deserving of the honour ; others prefer to advocate the 

 claims of the Milk Thistle, or of the Onopordum acanthium. Neither of these latter, it appears 

 to us, can however be accepted, as there is so much doubt of their being indigenous species; while 

 they share with the present plant the disadvantage of being much too large, as, if any value can 

 be attached to the legendary history of the subject, it must be some low-growing species like the 

 C. Acaulis that has most claim. In one chronicle we are told that Queen Scota, a mythical 

 sovereign, whose name is not to be found in any chronological record, after a grand review of her 

 troops, while resting on the turf was pricked by a Thistle, and from this circumstance she adopted 

 it, with the motto, "Nemo me impune lacessit" — no one with impunity injures me — as the badge of 

 her country. Another historian says that during a night attack of the Danes, one of the enemy 

 treading on a Thistle cried out, and thus gave timely warning to the Scots of their near approach, 

 and that, in gratitude for this, the Thistle was chosen as the national emblem. If either of these 

 legends be accepted, it is clear that the C. Acaulis has most right to our recognition ; but Sir 

 Harris Nicholas, in his " History of the Orders of Knighthood," shows that so far from the Thistle 

 being assumed as a badge at any such early period as either of these legends would infer, it is not 

 alluded to in any way as an emblematic object until the reign of James III., when we find it 

 referred to in an inventory of the property of that monarch at his death, in 1458 — " a covering of 

 variand purpir tarter browdin, with thrissils and a unicorn," the unicorn being another emblem of 

 Scotland. It was, beyond doubt, a national badge in 1 503, as in that year Dunbar wrote a poetic 



