NATURAL HISTORY. 
363 
own, will be rather greater, because the flowers are much smaller* 
and the foliage more varied, but the pleasure on my part and on that 
of the reader, will I hope be the same. I trust he will have as much 
delight in following this flowery path, as I enjoy in tracing it out 
for him. 
When the first rays of spring enlighten our progress by showing 
us, in the gardens, the Hyacinth, Tulip, Narcissus, Jonquil, and 
Lily of the valley, the analysis of which are already known, other 
flowers soon catch our attention, and recpiire examination, such as 
stocks and rockets. Whenever these are found double, we must not 
meddle with them, for they are disfigured, and nature will no longer 
be found amongst them. She refuses to produce any thing from 
monsters thus mutilated, for if the most brilliant part of the flower, 
the corolla, be multiplied, it is at the expence of the more essential 
parts, which disappear under this addition of brilliancy. 
Take then a single stock Gilliflower, as an example, and if you 
dissect it, an exterior part will immediately be perceived, which was 
wanting in the filaceous flowers, viz. the calyx. This consists of m 
four leaflets or folioles, which are commonly unequal by pairs, that 
is, tvvo leaflets opposite and equal of a smaller size, the other two 
also opposite and equal, but larger, especially towards the bottom, 
where they are so rounded as to exhibit every sensible protuberance 
on the outside. 
The corolla is also composed of four petals, I say nothing of their 
colour, because that forms no part of their character. Each of these is 
fastened to the receptacle by a narrow pale part called unguis, or claw, 
and this spreads out over the tojo of the calyx into a large flat 
coloured part called lamina, or the border, 
In the centre of the corolla is one pistil, long and cylindric, or 
nearly so, chiefly composed of a germ ending in a very short style, 
and that is terminated by an oblong stigma, which is bifed, that is, 
divided into two parts. 
I must now speak of the stamens, which are six in number, the 
same as in the lily tribe, but they are not all equal as in the former 
case. It will be perceived that there are two opposite to each other, 
which are sensibly shorter than the other four which separate them, 
and which are also separate from each other by pairs. To finish the 
history of the stock, we must not abandon it as soon as we have 
analyzed the flower, but wait till the corolla withers and falls, which 
happens very soon. We must then remark what becomes of the 
pistil, composed, as I observed before, of germ, style and stigma. 
The germ grows considerably in length, and thickens a little as the 
