272 



that's it; 



this was one of the earliest fruits 

 known in Great Britain. It is 

 known that in 1415 hawkers 

 sold cherries in the streets of 

 London, as they now do.* 



The blackberry, 11, or common 

 bramble, is a member of the bo- 

 tanical genus rubus, from a Celtic 



word signifying red. Some of 

 the species are evergreen, but 

 most of them are only biennial 

 woody plants, producing suckers 

 from roots, which ripen and drop 

 their leaves one year, and resume 

 their foliage, produce blossom 

 shoots, flowers, and fruit, and die 

 the next. This is the case with 

 the blackberry, which appears to 

 flourish better in a wild state than 

 under cultivation. The flowers, 

 12, are white, with five petals, 

 similar to the wild rose, and the 

 berries, 13, pass through grada- 

 tions of green, red, and black. 

 The leaves frequently exhibit 

 the operations of the leaf-mining 



* Ltudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants. 



insects, by colourless markings 

 (like the traces of snails), which 

 show where the insects have 

 eaten their way through the leaf. 

 The berries are cooling and 

 astringent, and are variously 

 used for tarts, preserves, jellies, 

 home-made wine, &c* 



The colours of the flowers, 

 frutit, and leaves of plants are 

 exceedingly varied, and all alike 

 depend upon the presence of 

 colouring principles in cells of 

 colourless tissue. 



There are eight principal colours recognised 

 in vegetables, viz., white, grey, brown, yellow, 

 green, blue, red, and black; and each of these 

 has many distinct shades. 



Of these shades of colour, nine have been 

 associated with white : pure, snow, ivory, chalk, 

 and milk white; with silvery, whitish, turning 

 uhile, and whitened. 



A similar number is also attributed to grey, 

 and are designated ash, lead, slate, and pearl 

 grey; smoky; hoary, and rather hoary, and 

 mouse-coloured. 



Twelve have been computed in connection 

 with brown, viz., brown, chestnut, deep and 

 bright brown, rusty, red, brown, rufous, and 

 cinnamon- coloured, with lurid, sooty, and liver- 

 coloured. 



fellow has twenty shades ; thus, lemon, yellow, 

 golden, pale, leather, waxy, and Isabella yellow; 

 sulphur, straw, ochre, orange, apricot, and 

 saffron- coloured; testaceous, tawny, and livid. 



There are seven varieties of green, of the 

 shades of olive, grass, sea, yellowish, apple, 

 meadow, and leek. 



Red has seventeen shades : carmine, rosy, 

 purple, sanguine, scarlet, cumaba, vrmilion, 

 coppery, brick, flame-coloured, &c. ; whilst its 

 compound blue has but seven, viz.. Prussian 

 blue itxligo, lavender, violet, Woe, and sky blue; 

 and black has four: pure, coal, raven, and pitch 

 black. 



Thus, as many as eighty-six different shades 

 of colour have been determined to exist in 

 plants ; but only two chnnical colouring prin- 

 ciples have been discovered, viz., chlorophyl and 

 chromule. 



Chlorophyl is so called from its imparting a 

 green colour to plants ; that is, that kind of 

 green which is universally met with in all 

 plants growing in the light* It is distributed 

 to the tissues themselves, but more particularly 

 to the surface of the starch cells, which are 

 abundant in all-green plants. 



Chromule is the general term for the colouring 

 principle of all other colours, although they 

 may be so closely approximated that adjoining 

 cells may have totally different colours. f 



* Keceipts for all these will he found in " In- 



au're With'n." 

 t Orr's Circl.- of" the Sciences. 



