22 
FLORA OF FORFARSHIRE. 
Here Nature’s purest worship sweetly flows, 
And Meditation finds a calm retreat. 
Within these shades, Oh ! how divinely sweet 
To roam, when morn has chased away night’s gloom, 
And hear the woodland song, and the soft bleat 
Of sheep, borne on the breeze, that wafts perfume 
From mountain, grove, and lawn, where all is bliss and bloom. 
A joyance seems to flood both earth and sky : 
Upon the boughs a thousand minstrels sing; 
Like raptured spirits chaunting far on high, 
Larks with loud praises make heaven's portals ring: 
Gay insects flitting round me on gilt wing, 
Disport their rainbow hues in solar beam : 
From rock to rock the spirit-echoes spring, — 
Dew-drops, like angel’s tears, on rose-leaves gleam — 
And underneath the shade glides slow a glassy stream.” 
Ord. X. — DROSERACEJE, DC. 
Gen. Br. L F. 1. Sp. Br. 3. F. 1. 
Drosera, L. Sun-dew. 
Br. sp. 3. F. 1. 
D. rotundifolia , L. Round-leaved Sun-dew. H. 38, B. 
35. — F. July, August. P. 
In marshy places abundant among the Clova mountains, 
and not uncommon among the Sidlaw Hills, as well as on the 
marshy banks of the Lakes, as Rescobie, Balgavies, Forfar, 
Lundie, &c. 
This curious little plant is an object of great interest to the 
careful observer of Flora’s beauties. Its round concave leaves 
have their upper surface covered with a profusion of scarlet 
hairs, each terminated by an oblong gland of the same colour, 
from which exudes a transparent and very glutinous juice, 
which is not evaporated in the warmest sunshine. It re- 
sembles a drop of dew, hence the plant derived the name of 
Bos Solis or Sun-dew. The hairs lengthen towards the 
margin of the leaf, and are more or less curved inwards. 
When an insect has the misfortune to alight upon a leaf it is 
held fast by the viscid fluid, and the hairs fold over it like 
the tentacula of a polypus. This irritability of the hairs has 
(in Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. iv. p. 135, v. 26, 491, 755-7, and 
vi. 177-8) been controverted, some denying and others affirm- 
ing it. I have witnessed the fact, but their motions are slow 
