FETID HELLEBORE. 
52 
tendency to preference of nourishment as do the sensi- 
tive tribes ; and some districts, that vary a little in their 
component parts or position from those adjoining, will 
present an individual or a race that is not found in 
another : the common product of the North or of the 
East is treasured in the Herbarium of the southern or 
western botanist ; we can boast but few, yet we have 
some of these capricious children of the soil. 
The fetid hellebore (helleborus foetidus) is not a com- 
mon plant with us, but we find it sparingly in one or 
two places ; and though a plant indigenous to Britain, 
yet it is not improbable that it has strayed from cultiva- 
tion, and become naturalized in many of the places in 
which we now find it. Its uses as an herb of celebrity 
for some complaints of cattle occasioned its being fos* 
tered in many a cottage-garden long since erased, where 
the good wife was the simple doctress of the village, 
when perhaps mortality was not more extensive than .in 
these days of greater pretension and display. Modem 
practice yet retains preparations of this herb, but it ap- 
pears that, from the powerful manner in which they act, 
great discretion is necessary in their administration. 
This hellebore is one of our few plants that present us 
with a dull, unsightly, unpleasing blossom. We have 
many with a corolla so small as to be little noticed ; but 
this plant, and the fetid iris (iris foetidissima), produce 
blossoms, that would generally be considered as dark- 
some and cheerless. There is no part of a vegetable 
which we usually admire more than its flowers, for that 
endless variety of colors, shades, forms, and odors, with 
which they are endowed ; yet the utility of the blossom 
is by no means obvious. Linnasus calls the corolla the 
arras, the tapestry of the plant ; and we are perfectly 
sensible that the blossom in very many instances is es- 
sential in various ways to securing and perfecting the 
germen; that it often contains the food of multitudes 
of insects, which feed on the pollen, the honey, or the 
germen ,* and that the odor emitted by it leads fre- 
quently various creatures to the object in request, and 
by their agency the fecundation and perfecting of the 
seeds are often effected : but we are astonished at the 
