FOXTON-FIRBY : NOTES ON FIELD BOTANY. 



155 



by its mystical use, previous to the recent outbreak of the Sepoys in India. 

 This Lotus is not the same as that " mythic lotus" — -the holy and beautiful 

 plant" NGlumhiiim speciosum, — the fruit of which is considered to have been 

 the Egyptian bean of Pythagorus, and the flower the lotus so often repre- 

 sented on the sculptured monuments of Egypt and India, and before which 

 the Hindoos prostrate themselves to this day. 



Leaving reluctantly the vicinity of the river, let us take our homeward 

 route thi'ough the rich pasture fields lying between it and the wood so 

 recently "vdsited. Observe how a little time has materially altered the appear- 

 ance of the hedges then just springing into foliage, now redolent of the 

 wild rose and "lush honeysuckle," and undergrown with many a wild 

 flower condemned to " waste its sweetness on the desert air." The Hawthorn 

 or May has shed its scented petals, but the " Traveller's Joy," Clematis 

 vitalba, spreads its green shades, and decks its cKmbing branches with 

 redundant panicles of greenish white flowers. Wanting the usual appendages 

 of parasitical plants, it takes hold of the adjacent shrubs and trees by 

 means of its climbing petioles, or leaf-stalks ; an analogous process which my 

 readers may observe for themselves in the pretty little climbing Tro'pcBolum 

 2oeregrinum, the so-called Canary-bird flower of their gardens. 



Here the great Bindweed, Convolvulus sepium, trails its green wreaths 

 and measures time by its flower (each blossom of the Convolvulaece lives but 

 a day.) The order to which this plant belongs is well distinguished by its 

 five-plaited infundibuliform corolla of one petal, which, when inverted, 

 resembles a little tent, in this species of the purest whiteness ; the stems 

 when broken exude a lactescent fluid. " It receives ita name from the Latin 

 convolvo, ' to entwine,' from the twisting habit of many of its species." 

 Bordering the field-path we shall find its lowly relative Convolvulus arvensis, 

 weaving its pretty flower-pattern amongst the sunburnt grass, and exhaling 

 from its pink and white-striped corollas, a faint, sweet, hawthorn-like fra- 

 grance. Here, also, the Silverweed, Potentilla anserina, opens its glittering- 

 flowers, and displays with every ruflling breeze the silvery lining of its 

 elegantly^cut foliage ; and Heart's-ease, Viola tricolor, prone in the sun, 

 expands its yellow petals dashed with purple. Under the hedge-row, tufts 

 of White Camj^ion, Lychnis vespertina, some specimens of which are some- 

 times to be found with large bright pink blossoms, flushes the flower-snow 

 with which the Great Hedge Bedstraw, Galium mollugo powders it. If we 

 examine this light tangle of leaves and stems, and spreading panicles of 

 minute flowers, we shall discover that its character is marked by the sighs 



