BERBERIDS. 
valuable dye. D. rotundifolia, the round-leaved Sundew, has the 
leaves close to the ground, nearly circular, and spreading; with a 
roundish limb abruptly tapering into a hairy petiole, the stem erect, 
springing from the centre of the leafy rosette. This plant inhabits 
boggy places, and is often found near London and elsewhere, along 
with Sphagnum. It is acrid and caustic, and in Italy the liqueur 
called Rossali is distilled from its juices. It curdles milk, and is. 
said to cure corns and warts. There are about forty species of 
Drosera found in boggy places all over the world, except in the 
extremes of heat and cold. Many of them are singularly beautiful. 
The gaudy Dionea, whose singular irritable leaves greatly re- 
semble the Sundews, is placed in this order by some botanists ; its 
indehiscent fruit and erect cestivation and placenta, placed at the 
base of a one-celled capsule, are the chief points of difference. 
The Fumariace®, or Fumitories, are herbaceous plants, with 
slender, brittle stems, and twisting leaf-stalks, yielding a watery 
juice; their non-stipulate leaves subdivided until their terminal 
lobes become ovate leaflefs; their flowers, two minute ragged 
sepals, with four exterior petals and six stamens united in two 
parcels. The leaves of Fumaria officinalis are succulent, saline, 
and bitter, and the expressed juice is recommended in cutaneous 
and other diseases, to correct acidity. They are named from the 
French word, Sumer, to smoke, from the unpleasant smell they all 
exhale. They are of little interest except to the botanist, to whom 
their sexual economy becomes an interesting study. The stamens, 
as we have seen, are in two bundles, the anthers being a little 
higher than the stigma; “the two middle ones of these anthers,” 
says Dr. Lindley, “are turned outwards, and do not appear to be 
capable of communicating their pollen to the stigma; the four 
lateral ones are also naturally turned outwards, but by a twist of 
their filament their face is presented to the stigma. They are all 
held firmly together by the cohesion of the tips of the flower, 
which, never unclosing, offers no apparent means of the pollen being 
distributed, so as to be shed upon the stigmatic surface. To remedy 
this inconvenience, the stigma is furnished with two blunt horns, 
one of which is inserted between and under the cells of the anthers 
of each parcel, so that, without any change of position on the part 
of either organ, the mere contraction of the valves of the anthers 
