ON PLANTS IN RELATION TO ANIMALS. 
78 7 
THE WATER-LILY FAMILY.—Nymph^ace^:. 
Aquatic herbs, with prostrate submerged root-stock, 
orbicular or peltate floating leaves, and large solitary flowers. 
Sepals few. Petals numerous, in several rows passing 
into the stamens, which are also very numerous, their 
anthers adnate. Carpels numerous, but either imbedded 
into the receptacle or combined together so as to form a 
single ovary with many cells each terminating in a sessile 
stigma. Seeds albuminous in the British genera, with a 
very small embryo.* 
The beautiful gradation from the sepals to the floral 
organs is exhibited in a remarkable manner in the white 
water-lily, on which account the flowers of this plant are 
well worthy of a careful study. Growing, as we have seen 
it, in the ponds of Cheshire, the pure white gleaming stars are 
truly wonderful, so much so that we could not resist having 
a flower or two with the beautifully-formed bright green 
leaves floating in a large China bowl on our library table 
during the whole period of its flowering, which is generally 
during the greater part of the summer. 
We have successfully cultivated this plant in our garden 
pond by tying a root to a stone, and then sinking over it 
any common mould, a plan we have never known to fail. 
Th e uses of the white water-lily are now few indeed, 
though formerly it was greatly esteemed both as food and 
medicine. It is at present, however, only grown for 
ornament; this and its former medicinal repute has caused 
its spread over a great part of our country as if indigenous 
with us; we can bear witness to the fact that in many places 
in which it is now met with it was planted for ornament. 
The author just referred to gives us its localities. Lakes 
or still waters, and slow rivers extending all over Europe and 
Northern and central Asia, although absent from peculiar 
localities. Generally distributed in Britain. Flowers in 
summer. It may be occasionally seen with smaller flowers, 
and several varieties have been distinguished by minute but 
uncertain characters in the forms of the anthers and stig- 
matic appendages. The folk-lore of the water-lily, as might 
be expected, is exceedingly interesting ; this is so well 
described in the following from the pen of Mrs. Lankester 
that we cannot forbear to quote her remarks in their entirety, 
not only upon this but, as will be seen presently, on the 
commoner yellow water-lily. 
White Water-lily. — Nymphsea derived from vvfjKpr) 
* See 'Illustrated Handbook of the British Flora/ vol. i, pp. 26-27. 
