180 
CLASS DIANDRIA. 
heart-shaped leaves ; and the persica, or Persian, with narrow 
leaves. 
The Jasmine, of which twenty-eight species are said to have 
been discovered, is an exotic of this class. The prim, {Ligia- 
trum,) is found growing wild in some parts of New England ; 
though in general it is seen but little in the United States, except 
when cultivated. In England, it is planted for fences ; as it 
grows rapidly, it soon becomes useful for this purpose,' and with 
its green leaves and white flolvers, it also gives to the farms an 
air of neatness and taste. 
The Sage, (Salvia,) on account of the form of its corolla be- 
longs to the natural family of the labiate flowers; these are most- 
ly placed in the class Didynantia, having four stamens, two long 
and two short : but in some cases the labiate flowers have but 
two stamens ; this circumstance, according to the rules of clas- 
sification, separates them from their natural family, and brings 
them under the class we are now considering. You may un- 
derstand this better, if we compare it to taking a person froni 
his relations, to put him among strangers. But this evilmuafe^ 
sometimes be borne for the sake of some attendant good ; we 
are also obliged to submit to the necessity of occasionally sepa- 
rating the flowers from their natural relations, because we can- 
not turn aside from our rules of classification to accommodate a 
few plants, which unfortunately possess those properties 
which bring them under two sets of laws. The sage seems to 
have made an effort to escape this misfortune, for it seems al- 
most to have attained four, by doubling its filaments, but two of 
these having no anthers cannot be considered as stamens ; 
therefore the plant falls back into the second class, and is placed 
by the side of the lilac, to which it has no kind of resemblance, 
except in its two stamens. This plant, however, is not the only 
one of the labiate flowers, which is removed from its natural 
family in the 13th class; for the rosemary and the mountain 
mint, accompany it into the second class ; but these have not 
the two imperfect filaments which w-ere remarked in the Sage. 
The genus Salvia contains one hundred and fourteen species; 
the one most commonly cultivated with us is the officinalis, a 
shrub-like perennial plant ; to this we give more particularly 
the name of sage. Another species of the same genus is the 
sclary, called Clarry, this has larger and broader leaves 
than the common sage ; it is cultivated for its medicinal pro- 
perties. 
A very small plant called Enchanter’s Night-shade, ( Circcca ,) 
may be found growing wild in shady places ; it is a very harm- 
Sage — Enchanter’s night shade. 
