The Poppy. 77 



most finished of coloring, with petals thin as gossamer, and 

 double as the rose. This flower bursts out of its confinement at 

 maturity, with considerable force, throwing off the two-leaved 

 caducous calyx to some distance, and astonishing the beholder 

 who sees so large and so beautiful a corolla escape from so small 

 a dwelling. The petals are frequently white, with a delicate 

 edging of scarlet or rose color, or red petals with white edges, so 

 variously diversified that two plants are seldom alike in their 

 flowers. With what amazement and delight do we frequently 

 regard the ingenuity of the mechanic when he displays the move- 

 ments of a watch or musical box, encompassed in a case of 

 diminutive size; but the most complete and costly of these 

 baubles are as inferior to the works which Nature has employed 

 on the Poppy, as the clumsiest wheel of a country wheelwright 

 is to the finished mechanism of the most finished watchmaker. 

 The calyx of the Poppy not only shuts in the numerous and 

 large petals of the flower with its innumerable chives, bearing 

 their anthers on points as fine as hairs, each anther containing 

 an innumerable number of fertilizing particles, but it also con- 

 tains the capsule, which in itself cannot be examined without 

 exciting our utmost admiration of the wisdom with which it has 

 been formed by the Universal Creator. The capsule is covered 

 by a shield-formed stigma, thickly perforated, so as to admit the 

 fecundating particles of the farina, which are so disposed around 

 the eleven chambers of the capsule, that each seed receives its 

 regular portion of this matter by means of an umbilical cord, not- 

 withstanding that there are frequently six thousand of these vege- 

 table eggs contained in one capsule. When we reflect that each 

 of these small seeds is so admirably perfect in its minute dimen- 

 sions as to contain all the essentials necessary to form a plant on 

 the following year, which is in turn destined to produce at least 

 twenty capsules, we must exclaim with Pope, 



How wondrous are Thy ways, 

 How far above our knowledge and our praise. 



The Carnation Poppy will thrive in any soil or situation ; but 

 Mr. Pirolle tells us that the seeds should only be gathered from 

 the most double kinds, and that the capsules should be taken 

 from the centre stalk of the plant only ; it is a kind well adapted 

 to ornament newly planted shrubberies, or the foreground of 



