ON PLANTS IN RELATION TO ANIMALS. 
717 
recorded to show the least observant among us the great 
beauty and interest of the species that will here be re¬ 
ferred to. 
They are all of them denizens of the garden, where they 
have kept their place from a very remote period, not only 
on account of their bright effects, but for the uses to which 
some of them have been applied. 
These consist of the following : 
1. Aquilegia —Common Columbine. 
2. Delphinium — Larkspur . 
3. Aconitum — Aconite. 
4. Pjeonia — Pceony. 
1. The Aquilegia is so named from the spurs of the petals, 
which are supposed to have a kind of resemblance to the 
claws of the eagle. The wild flower is usually of a dark 
blue or purple colour, but cultivated examples are remarkable 
for their great variety in colour, as white, pink, light and 
dark blue, purple, &c. 
The spurred corolla is a curious and interesting feature, 
each petal having a spur, five of which converge around the 
pedicle at the base of the flower. The common name is from 
columba , a dove, either from a fancied resemblance to that 
bird, or from the dove-like colours which some of the culti¬ 
vated forms assume. 
The flowers are remarkable for the double varieties which 
occur in the garden; sometimes in these the number of the 
corollas are multiplied, whilst in others each petal will have 
this arranged internally. 
The bottom of these petals is termed a nectary, and every 
child knows that the rounded knob of the spur is usually 
full of a very luscious honey. The bee is also aware of this, 
but as he cannot reach it in the usual way it will often be 
seen that this reservoir of sweets has been eaten into by the 
insect to extract the honied treasure. We once saw in a 
garden in Dorset a specimen of columbine in which all the 
petals were flat and spurless, attached to the base of the 
flower in the same manner as the petals of the clematis, to 
the garden forms of some of which it bore a not inapt resem¬ 
blance. This case is very curious, as it leads to the inquiry— 
Is the spur a generic eharacteric, or is it the result of a 
peloria mode of growth ? If these simpler petals be taken 
as the initiative of the plant, we must conclude that from the 
showy nature of these flowers they have everywhere been 
pressed into cultivation, and therefore, that the wild plants 
that we find in our woods are not truly wild, but have 
