PLANTS. 
29 
to its natural history, has described it in a manner 
so truly his own, and has placed it in such an in- 
teresting light, that we shall gladly avail ourselves 
of his account. 
Speaking of the compensatory system in the au- 
tumnal crocus, the doctor says: 44 I have pitied this 
plant a thousand times. Its blossom rises out of 
the ground in the most forlorn condition possible ; 
without a sheath, a fence, a calyx, or even a leaf to 
protect it ; and that not in the spring, not to be 
visited by summer suns, but under all the disad- 
vantages of the declining year. When we come 
however to look more closely into the structure of 
this plant, we find that instead of its being neg- 
lected, Nature has gone out of her course to pro- 
vide for its security, and to make up to it for all its 
defects. The seed-vessel, which in other plants is 
situated within the cup of the flower, or just be- 
neath it, in this plant lies buried ten or twelve 
inches under ground within the bulbous root. The 
tube of the flower, which is seldom more than a 
few tenths of an inch long, in this plant extends 
down to the root. The styles always reach the 
seed-vessel ; but it is in this, by an elongation un- 
known to any other plant. All these singularities 
contribute to one end. 4 As this plant blossoms 
late in the year, and, probably, would not have 
time to ripen its seeds before the access of winter, 
which would destroy them, Providence has con- 
trived its structure such, that this important office 
may be performed at a depth in the earth out of the 
