REVIEW. 
117 
Notwithstanding all that we have advanced in favour of this work, it still 
appears necessary to extract a sufficient portion for a specimen of the style. We 
have borrowed part of Letter VII, on the Chick weed tribe of plants. 
From the earliest period of your familiarity with a garden, you must have 
been acquainted with those sweet aromatic flowers called Pinks, Ficcotees, and 
Carnations, and you must have admired their beautiful stripes, and the symmetry 
with which their petals are arranged. It is also not improbable that you have 
some knowledge of a mean weed, called Chickweed {Stellaria media), which 
inhabits every neglected corner of your garden; Corn Cockle {Agrostemma 
Githago), Bachelors' Buttons {Lychnis dioica). Ragged Robin (Lychnis fios 
cuculi), and many species of Catchfly (Silene), are also pretty flowers, that you 
will easily perceive, either by hunting for them in the fields, or by inquiry after 
them in gardens. 
^' All these agree with each other in a number of characters which are so 
remarkable as to divide them from all other plants, and to cause them to be 
established as a distinct natural order, called the Chickweed tribe, which is com- 
posed for the chief part of plants of little interest or beauty, among which there 
is not a single species with unwholesome properties. 
" Uninteresting as many of them are, they are so common that every one 
who pretends to botanical knowledge must learn how to recognise them, even if 
it were not for the sake of the few kinds, that, like the pink, are our familiar 
acquaintances. 
To understand the structure of the Chickweed tribe, I shall not ask you to 
take the Chickweed itself, because it is a plant with verv small flowers ; let us 
rather seek some species in which all the parts can be easily seen, as a pink, for 
instance. Here is a pretty species, the glaucous pink {Dianthus glaucus) of 
Scotland ; if you have it not in your garden, any other will do as well, provided 
it is not double. 
" This little herb is called glaucous, from a Latin word signifying bluish-grey^ 
because its leaves^ like those of many other pinks, have such a colour in a 
remarkable degree. Its stems are very much swoln at the joints where the leaves 
are set on. The leaves are exceedingly narrow, undivided, and rather rough at 
their edge ; they have only one single vein, which runs through them from one end 
to the other. 
" Flow then are we to ascertain whether this plant is exogenous or not ? for 
there is nothing here to show whether the veins have a netted structure ; there is 
apparently only one vein to examine. I must confess this looks very like a 
difficulty ; and I dare say you will now suppose the time has come when you must 
have recourse to patience and a microscope to learn whether there are two cotyle- 
dons in the embryo or only one ; believe me, however, we have not yet arrived at 
so disheartening a point. There are, in fact, many ways of showing you how to 
determine whether this is an exogenous plant or not, without counting the seed- 
leaves. That which I select is one of the easiest to understand ; but I must first 
mention a few matters that I have not hitherto touched upon. 
" You are no doubt acquainted with some of the idle tales that are told by the 
