CCXVII.— THE CENTAURY. 
Centaurion umbellatum Gilibert. 
T HE Family Gentianacece is a considerable one, numbering some 750 species in 
more than sixty genera. Distributed throughout all climates, from the 
regions of perpetual snow to the hottest parts of South America and India, they are 
mainly northern and sub-alpine. They are very rare in both the Arctic and the 
Antarctic Regions : on Behring Strait and on the Straits of Magellan they occur 
just above sea-level : in southern Europe they are represented at altitudes of 
from 6,000 to 9,000 feet : in the Himalaya and in the Rocky Mountains they 
reach 16,000 feet; and under the Equator they do not occur below 7,850 feet 
above the sea. They are adapted to a great variety of conditions, the group 
including saprophytes, aquatic and marsh plants, halophytes, and stunted alpines. 
Most of them are herbaceous, erect, and glabrous, though often perennial with 
persistent rhizomes. Their leaves are usually opposite, exstipulate, sessile, and 
entire ; and their inflorescence, a trichasial or dichasial cyme. The flowers are 
polysymmetric and perfect and pollinated by insects. They are often relatively 
large and remarkable for their clear brilliant colours. In South America and New 
Zealand the prevalent colour among them is said to be red, whilst in Europe it is 
blue — yellow, white, and other colours being less common. There are usually five, 
but sometimes four, parts in each of the three outer floral whorls, the sepals being 
inferior, united, and persistent, and the stamens forming a single whorl, epipetalous, 
but alternating with the corolla-lobes. There are two united carpels, forming a 
one-chambered, septicidal, many-seeded capsule : the placentation is parietal : the 
style is single ; and the ovules are anatropous. All the members of the Family are 
intensely bitter and many of them furnish valuable tonic medicines. 
Engler subdivides the Family into two Sub-Families, the Gentianoidea, including 
Centaurion , Blackstonia, Gentiana , etc., and the I/Lenyanthoide<e — to which Menyanthes 
and Nymphoides belong — with scattered leaves. 
The genus Centaurion , like the allied Chironia, and Centaurea among the Composite, 
a genus including the Blue Cornflower and the Knapweeds, commemorate that 
interesting figure in Greek mythology the Centaur Chiron. Modern rationalism 
sees only in these picturesque monsters, half man and half horse, the Thracians who 
hunted the wild bull on horseback, transfigured into this dual being by Greek 
imagination, as were the Spanish cavalry, when first seen, by that of the natives of 
America. It is difficult, however, to destroy the poetry of the story. Chiron, the 
weird horseman of the woods of Mount Pelion, of immortal parentage, was taught 
by Apollo and Artemis — twin hunters of the heavens — by Sun and Moon, as is 
every one who leads the life of the woods ; and thus became skilled alike in the 
chase, in medicine, and in music. Hercules, Achilles, and Aesculapius were among 
his pupils, and the genera Heracleum > Achillea , and Asclepias commemorate the 
