FLORAL CURIOSITIES. 
13 
kinds, we may arrive at a tolerably correct knowledge of the proper manure which 
any individual plant demands for its peculiar aliment. 
The science of manuring, we admit, is in its infancy ; yet its dawning has 
become manifest, researches have commenced, and the mind of man has begun to 
appreciate the powers with which it is gifted. 
FLORAL CURIOSITIES. 
Literature has its curiosities, which have been laboriously collected ; art has 
its museums of singular antique productions ; and a variety of sciences their 
illustrations of the marvellous : but the oddities in flowers, though of unusual 
interest, have never been brought together in collections, nor more than sparingly 
treated of in botanical works. 
The resources of an infinite mind may be expected to produce a boundless and 
beautiful diversity of form and colour. Hence, when we see constant accessions 
of new plants, exhibiting different aspects from all that have been before known, 
we are hardly moved to astonishment. It is the remarkable similarity which 
certain species exhibit to common and familiar objects, which most excites our 
wonder and our interest. And so widely diffused are instances of this character, 
that botanists generally found the names of new genera on some actual or 
imagined resemblance, in particular parts of the plant, to things with which most 
persons are acquainted. 
The strange and elegant Pitcher-plant (Nepenthes distillatoria), with its 
charming miniature representative, Cephalotus follicularis ; the piteher-like leaves 
of the various Sarracenias ; the trap-shaped form of the terminal portions of the 
leaves of Dioncea muscipula ; the Snail-flower, recently depicted in our pages ; the 
glandular bladders, like drops of dew, on the pretty Sundews and other plants ; 
the frosted warty substances on the Ice-plant ; and numbers of like subjects, are 
very generally known. The old-man Cereus (C. senilis)^ the Turk's cap Cactus 
{Melocactus communis)^ and the Elephant's foot {Tamus elephantipes) ^ the clumsy 
woody stem of which is likened to an elephant''s foot, are likewise pretty generally 
found in large collections. 
But all the old-fashioned natural mimics in the vegetable world have been 
quite eclipsed in these properties by the large and increasing tribe of Orchidacese. 
Every plant comprised in it is itself a curiosity. Still, there are hundreds of 
them whose flowers take a prodigious variety of known shapes, borrowing their 
outlines alike from nature and art, and from nearly every department of both. 
These have been very appropriately brought together, for the most part, in the 
last number of Mr. Bateman's splendid work on Orchidaceee ; and they constitute 
a group which, though sufficiently marvellous, might receive most extensive 
