716 
THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 
medicinal agents lilies and the plants allied to them have 
claimed from remote antiquity, and ever will claim, no small 
share of attention. 
The Great Teacher bids us “ consider the lilies of the 
field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin, and 
yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was 
not adorned like one of these.” (St. Matthew, chap, vi, 28, 
29.) With us it is usually supposed that the lily of the 
valley was here alluded to ; but there is reason to think that 
the eastern scarlet lily ( Lilium chalcidonicum) , a very showy 
and striking species, was the one referred to ; but such is the 
beauty of most of the lily tribe that nearly any of them might 
be employed to point the same lesson. As an Alliance 
Professor Lindley says of the Liliales, “ These are the 
centre of the division of endogens, with complete flowers 
free from the ovary. They are known from the xyrids by 
their sepals and petals, being all equally coloured; from the 
juncals by their tender highly-developed flowers. 
“ Their undoubted accordance with dictyogens, in many 
essential particulars enables them to extend their frontier to 
that of the vast mass of exogens ; and their wood, which 
does certainly in Yucca and Dracaena arrange itself in circles, 
confirms the tendency of the Lilials towards a junction with 
the same class .” — e Veg. Kingdom.’ 
Their Natural Orders are as under : 
1. Giliesiacesea — Giliads. 
2. Liliaceae — Lilyworts. Anthers turned inwards. 
3. Melanthaceae — Melanths . Anthers turned out- 
wards. 
4. Pontederaceae— ^Pontederads. 
Of these the two central orders claim our especial atten- 
tion, and, as regards the first, on account of its perspicuity 
and simplicity, we transcribe the following from Pereira’s 
‘ Materia Medica.’ 
LILIACEAE, Lindl. — Lilyworts. 
Characters. — Calyx and corolla both alike, coloured, re- 
gular, occasionally cohering in a tube. Stamens 6, inserted 
into the sepals and petals ; anthers opening inwards. Ovary 
superior, 3-celled, many seeded ; style 1 ; stigma simple or 
3-lobed. Fruit succulent, or dry and. capsular, 3-celled. 
Seeds packed one upon another in one or two rows ; embryo 
with the same direction as the seed, in the axis of fleshy 
albumen or uncertain in direction and position, occasionally 
