CLEOME SPECIOSISSIMA.— SHEWY CLEOME. 
Class VI. HEXANDRIA. Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, CAPPARIDE.E. THE CAPER TRIBE. 
Raised in the Garden of the Horticultural Society from seeds sent by Dr. Deppe from Xalapa. It is a 
tender annual, well adapted for planting among other border annuals m the summer, when i : wiU ^ npen i s 
seeds if the season is favourable; for a greenhouse it is less suitable, its leaves having little beauty, but 
is always advisable to have a plant or two in reserve under glass to secure seeds, m case those in the open 
air should fail. Flowers late in the summer* . . ... 
Without affirming a plant to be a real animal, as some of the Greeian philosophers imagined, we shall 
best understand its true nature and construction, by considering it as an animal in the prineip e of its 
systematic form; but without being sentient or intelligent; and differing also in one essentml poult in the 
matter of its composition. They are distinguished also by another general peculiarity in the. mat^l 
nature. Animal bodies seem, by some interior tho yet unknown process, to produce lime-plants, never 
but these, as their appropriate function, appear to generate carbon instead. The absence of any 'factual 
quality makes their principle of life to he very dissimilar to, or at least very distinct from, hat of animals. 
Most vegetables have an upright body, with vessels ascending and commumca ing each otter as 
in us, but with sap instead of blood; with woody fibres, instead of bone; with pith, instead of bral 
nerve; with bark or rind, instead of skin or hide. Their leaves imbibe it, as we breathe it, and Iso light 
and moisture; and in their continual motion, answer the purposes of our respiration and exercise. They 
also imbibe and expire an aerial fluid, as we do, tho with this difference, that they emit oxygen 
the influence of the solar rays, while animals absorb and retain it. They require : food as we do, tat them 
roots are their mouths. But all vegetables are fixed in their place of growth; they have no locoinotoe 
power. Where they are born, they live and die. This circumstance wouW alone make them P<* 
class of beings, if they had every other similitude to animal existences. They are living beings, but with 
do power of spontaneous moveability from their first station of development. 
The seed contains the embryo plant in the little eoreulum, which all, on bemg carefully opened, display 
It is familiarly called the heart of the walnut-the little figure at one end of aU nuts and kernels. Ves 1 
extend from this to the substance in which it lies, which has received the name of Cotyledon. If this be 
single, as in the grasses and corn, it is a mono-cotyledon seed and plant; if, as in e arger er s a 
trees, it consists of two lobes, they are called di-cot, ledons; if no such are discernible at all, they are 
termed acotyledon plants, which in some, and perhaps in most countries, are the ,«*. ~ - A “ 
plants consist of two substances, vessels and cellular tissue. In general language, what is not one, may be 
deem The‘ h s e eed he of plants resembles the animal ovum or egg. The access of a certain degree of heat 
is necessary to begin the activity and development in both; and when that occurs to the seed, in 
a proper soil and^lMg and with sufficient moisture. Vegetation begins. The cotyledons swell an 
rise in the seminal leaves. The eoreulum lengthens downwards in the germ of the rad.de and its uppe 
nart ascends in the plumula. A nutritious matter passes from the seminal leaves to the radicle, which 
daily elongates. The process of vegetation thus beginning from the cotyledons, steadily proceeds unde, 
its subsequent nourishment from the earth and air, until the perfect plant is formed. 
* Botanical Register. 
