LADIES BOTANY AND BOTANY FOR LADIES. 
01 
was the very ground on which it was so 
strongly recommended in Mr. Loudon's Ency- 
clopedia of Plants ; w,e have now, however, 
confessedly the rank poisons, the deadly hem- 
lock and dropwort, in the same order as carrot, 
fennel, and parsley ; and many other instances 
equally striking occur; so that there is no 
dependence on this test, nor will it, we think, 
be mentioned again. The formidable task to 
be undertaken to become acquainted with 
Botany, may be appreciated by the fact, that 
there are two hundred and twenty natural 
orders, and that in these orders there are 
many genera ; many of the orders comprising 
genera admitted by distinct rules, and some 
by exceptions. In looking at the two volumes, 
we perceive this difference in the plan — Dr. 
Lindley's is a series of letters, in which the 
orders and form of the genera are elaborately, 
though plainly, described ; Mrs. Loudon's is a 
series of articles, explaining the most exten- 
sive and familiar orders and genera in the first 
part, and then giving, in a scientific arrange- 
ment, the entire two hundred and twenty 
orders, with their distinctive characteristics ; 
and this difference in the plans is some justifi- 
cation of Mrs. Loudon in following with a 
" Botany for Ladies " so close upon the heels 
of Dr. Lindley's " Ladies' Botany." There is 
another distinction belonging to Mrs. Lou- 
don's — the author rarely diverges from the 
straightforward path, but keeps to the point 
under consideration very closely; whereas Dr. 
Lindley frequently digresses, we do not say 
unprofitably ; for instance, in speaking of the 
blanching of celery, he says — 
" The consequence of light and air acting 
upon the surface of leaves, is the forming in 
their substance, which is originally of the same 
yellowish-white that you see in seeds, a green 
colour, which is more or less deep in pro- 
portion to the degree in which the light is 
powerful ; thus a plant which stands exposed 
to the sun all day long, has its leaves of a 
darker green than another which grows among 
other trees, or near a building which throws 
it into the shade for a part of the day ; 
and the latter, again, is darker green than 
a plant which grows at the north side of 
a high wall, or in an enclosed court which 
the sun's rays never enter. In like man- 
ner, if you cause a plant, or any part of a 
plant, to grow in total darkness, it will be 
entirely destitute of greenness ; or, in other 
words, the substance of the plant will remain 
of its original yellowish-white, because no 
green matter can be formed but by the action 
of light ; and if a part already green is kept 
for a long time in darkness, it will become 
yellowish-white, in consequence of all its green 
being destroyed by the peculiar action of the 
atmosphere upon plants in darkness. — This is 
the explanation of blanching. But mere lo.-.s 
of colour is not the only consequence of plant-; 
being kept in the dark ; you have already been 
told that poisons, when it is the nature of 
plants to yield poisons, are also formed in 
leaves by the action of light ; the absence of 
this wonderful agent will therefore prevent 
the formation of poison, as well as the forma- 
tion of green colour; and hence blanching 
renders poisonous plants harmless. Thus, in 
the celery, but a small portion only of the 
leaves is exposed to light ; the whole of the 
stem and of the lower part of the leaves is 
buried in the earth ; the small quantity of 
noxious matter that might be formed by the 
few leaves which are allowed to bask in the 
sun, has to pass down the buried stalks of the 
leaves before it can reach the stem, where it 
would be laid up ; but you know the leaf- 
stalk of the celery is very long, and anything 
which has to filter from the upper part of such 
a leaf to its bottom has to take a long jour- 
ney, in the course of which it is constantly 
under the destroying influence of darkness ; 
so that before it can reach the stem, it will all 
have perished." — Lindley, pp. 31, 32. 
Then again upon the subject of hybridizing, 
though we deny altogether the facts in prac- 
tice, he offers the following : — 
"It has been discovered, that if two plants 
are very near relations, the pollen of one will 
act upon the stigma of the other, just as well 
as if the pollen was produced by the anthers 
of the plant to which the stigma belongs ; but 
when the seeds so obtained are sown, they 
change to plants which are not exactly like 
either of those from the intermixture of which 
they sprang, but which bear a strong resem- 
blance to both. For instance, if you take the 
pollen of a plant with bine flowers, and place 
it upon the stigma of one which has red 
flowers, the seed will produce a plant having 
purple flowers ; or, if a plant with a very 
vigorous mode of growth is thus intermixed 
with another of a very dwarf habit, the plants 
which spring from seeds thus procured will 
be neither very dwarf nor very tall ; and so 
on. This is the secret of the improvement of 
Pelargoniums, which happen to intermix very 
easily : a sort with large ugly flowers is inter- 
mixed with one with small neat flowers, and 
you have, in all probability, a variety with 
large flowers, that are as neat in appearance 
as those of the small flowered kind. I need 
not particularize, with more minuteness, the 
way in which plants respectively influence 
each other ; a little reflection must render it 
apparent to you, now that you understand the 
principle. I must not, however, omit to tell 
you, that intermixture can only take place be- 
tween plants very closely related to each other, 
and that distant relations have no influence 
