FUCHSIA FULGENS. THE SHINING FUCHSIA. 
Class VIII. OCTANDRIA.— Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, ONAGRARIAL — THE EVENING PRIMROSE TRIBE. 
Fuchsia Fulgens. Branches glabrous; leaves opposite, petiolate, ovate, cordate, acute, denticulated, 
glabrous; pedicels axillary, shorter than the flowers, upper ones racemose; lobes of calyx ovate lanceolate, 
acute, exceeding the petals, which are acutish. Native of Mexico. Branches and pedicels red. Flowers 
reddish scarlet, 2 inches long. Racemes drooping at the apex. 
This most beautiful plant was named Fuchsia in honour of Leonard Fuchs, a celebrated German 
botanist, author of Historia Stirpium in 1542. It now flowers in the open air, and should always be kept 
moist. The fuchsia is an elegant plant for the drawing-room or study. 
Although it is true, (says the author of the Flora Domestica,) that in and near London plants will not 
thrive so well as in a purer air, yet persons who are condemned to a town life, will do well to obtain 
whatever substitute for a garden as may be in their power, for there is confessedly no greater folly than that 
of refusing all pleasure, because we cannot have all we desire. 
A lover of flowers, who cannot have a garden or a greenhouse, will gladly cherish anything that has 
the aspect of a green leaf. 
“ These serve him with a hint 
That nature lives ; that sight-refreshing green 
Is still the livery she delights to wear, 
Though sickly samples of th’exuberant whole. 
What are the casements lined with creeping herbs, 
The prouder sashes fronted with a range 
Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed 
The Frenchman’s darling ? Are they not all proofs, 
That man immured in cities, still retains 
His inborn, inextinguishable thirst 
Of rural scenes, compensating his loss 
By supplemental shifts, the best he may ?” Cowper. 
The glory of October, however, (says Mr. Howitt,) is the gorgeous splendour of wood- scenery* 
Woods have in all ages vividly impressed the human mind; they possess a majesty and sublimity which 
strike and charm the eye. Their silence and obscurity affect the imagination with a meditative awe. They 
soothe the spirit by their grateful seclusion, and delight it by glimpses of their wild inhabitants, bv their novel 
cries, and by odours and beautiful phenomena peculiar to themselves. This may be more particularly applied to 
our own woods, woods comparatively reclaimed; but in less populous and cultivated countries they possess a 
far more wild and gloomy character. The abodes of banditti, of wild beasts and deadly reptiles, they truly 
merit the epithet of “salvage woods,” which Spenser has bestowed upon them. In remote ages their fearful 
solitudes and ever-brooding shadows fostered superstition and peopled them with satyrs, fauns, dryads, hama- 
dryads, and innumerable spirits of dubious natures. The same cause consecrated them to religious rites; it was 
from the mighty and ancient oak of Dodona that the earliest oracles of Greece were pronounced. The 
Syrians had their groves dedicated to Baal, and Ashtaroth the queen of Heaven, and infected the Israelites 
with their idolatrous customs. In the heart of woods the Druid cut down the bough of misletoe, and per- 
formed the horrible ceremonies of his religion. The philosophers of Greece resorted to groves, as schools 
the most august and benefiting the delivery of their sublime precepts. In the depths of woods did ancho- 
rites seek to forget the world, and to prepare their hearts for the purity of heaven. To lovers and poets 
they have ever been favourite haunts; and the poets, by making them the scenes and subjects of their most 
beautiful fictions and descriptions, have added to their native charms a thousand delightful associations. 
