LADIES’ BOTANY. 
71 
you magnify this pollen in a drop of water, each grain will be found 
three-cornered and held to its neighbour by excessively delicate 
threads; a peculiarity in the pollen which is rarely met with, except 
in the Evening Primrose Tribe. 
The ovary is inferior, and is marked with eight ribs, of which four 
are more prominent than the others; it contains four cavities, in 
each of which is a great many seeds. The style is a long slender 
body, rising within the tube of the calyx, as high as the stamens, and 
then separating into four narrow stigmas. 
The fruit is a dry oval case, with four angles, opening into four 
pieces, called valves. 
Thus you see all the parts of this plant, from its calyx to its fruit, 
consist either of four or twice four parts; the like happens in all the 
genuine species of the same natural order; by which character they 
are easily known. There are many plants of very different orders, 
that have four sepals, or four petals, or some of their other parts, of 
that number; but it is only in the Evening Primrose tribe that all 
the parts are in fours at the same time; or some multiple of four, 
which is botanically the same thing. 
There are no Evening Primroses, really wild, in Great Britain, 
however frequent they may be in gardens. But there is one ex¬ 
ceedingly common wild flower, called Willow-Herb (Epilobium,) 
one of the species of which, called the “ great hairy,” is, perhaps, the 
most noble of all our British herbs. Its stout hairy stems grow five 
or six feet high, and are terminated by long clusters of bright red 
flowers. If you were to compare it with the description of the Even¬ 
ing Primrose, you would think it really must be a species of that 
genus, only the flowers are yellow. This, however, is not the only 
difference. When the fruit of the Willow-Herb is ripe, it sheds seeds, 
which are furnished with a curious apparatus to enable them to fly 
about, and spread themselves over the land: each of them has a very 
long tuft of silk at one end, which is so light, that the smallest breeze 
is sufficient to bnoy it up, and raise it aloft in the air, there to be 
caught and carried to a great distance. Nothing of this sort is found 
in the Evening Primrose. , 
Another plant, of far greater beauty than either of the foregoing, 
is the Fuchsia, an American genus, for which no English name has 
been contrived, and which is now one of the greatest of all the foreign 
ornaments with which our gardens are embellished in the summer 
and autumn. Every body has Fuchsias; the poor weaver grows 
them in his window ; many an industrious cottager shows them as 
the pride of the little plot of ground before his door; and even the 
