894 THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 
form their dehiscence by two lateral clefts. Of these stamens ten 
only are represented by filaments dilated in the form of mem- 
branous scales of a silvery white, folded upon their edges and 
laid upon the pistil. The organ is composed of five free unilocular 
ovaries, containing many anatropal ovules inserted in two contiguous 
vertical series. These ovaries, when at maturity, change into five 
free follicles. The seeds which they enclose contain a very small 
embryo, placed at the base of a thorny and very abundant albu- 
men. With regard to tlie organs of vegetation, the stem is erect, 
solitary, or more or less numerous,—that is, one only from the 
head of the roots to the branching on the upper portion. The 
radicle leaves, for the most part, stalked; base of the stalk 
dilated leaflets, broad as long, and petiolated with long petiolated 
divisions of the first order, irregularly three-lobed stem leaves, 
few with shorter stalks, the upper ones sessile, bracts narrow and 
three-lobed. 
The Columbine (Aguilegia vulgaris) is found growing in its 
primitive simplicity in hilly woods and upon the borders of the 
forests of Bondy, Montmorency, St. Germain, Versailles, and in 
woods and copses where the soil is calcareous, in various parts of 
England and Scotland. In the chalky 
‘\ copses of Kent and Surrey there is no 
doubt of its being indigenous. In the 
Helleboré, or Christmas Rose, the sepals, 
five in number, are large, and the petals 
small and numerous, and situated at the 
base of the andracaum (Fig. 398). The 
corolla of the Columbine may be said to 
i iescone Rank be a calcareate polypetalous corolla ; but 
s. five sepals: p, five petals. culture has worked many curious modi- 
fications in the Columbine. We frequently see the five-petalled 
cornet enclosed with others, fitted in series, whilst five others, of 
a like series, are placed opposite the sepals. It seems, in fact, as 
the flower was entirely composed of these cornets, the one series 
contained within the other. In other varieties, on the contrary, 1? 
place of the hollow spur or cornet, we find only oval and almost 
flat petals, often in considerable numbers. As inall these cases the 
stamens become scarce as the supernumerary petals increase ™ 
