72 
LADIES’ BOTANY. 
suburban inhabitants of London itself, speak of the beautiful Fuch¬ 
sias they rear with enthusiasm and delight. You must, therefore, 
know very well what the Fuchsia plant is. Examine its flowers ; on 
the outside of all, you have a deep crimson covering, divided into 
four firm sharp pointed leaves .* this is the calyx, Rolled up within 
it, and closely embracing the stamens, are four little dark purple 
leaves, which are not half so long as the calyx : they are petals. The 
other parts you will easily recognise. But the fruit is not a hard dry 
case, or capsule, bursting into four valves when it is ripe; it contains 
four cavities indeed; but its rind is deep purple, fleshy and juicy : 
in a word it is a berrv. This, then, is a marked distinction from 
other plants of the Evening Primrose tribe; but, as in all other res¬ 
pects, the Fuchsia agrees with them, it is not accounted sufficiently 
different to belong to any other Natural Order. 
The Evening Primrose tribe has little, except its beauty, to ren¬ 
der it interesting to mankind, for there is not a single species which 
possesses any useful property worth mentioning. Remember that 
number four, throughout all the parts of the flower, is its character ; 
and you will be in no danger of either forgetting it or mistaking it. 
I have already said, that other orders have, occasionally, four parts 
of the calyx, or corolla, or of some other class of organs, and yet do 
not belong to the Evening Primrose Tribe. I will give an instance. 
You know what a Myrtle is. Take a sprig of that beautiful, but 
delicate evergreen, for your next subject. It has hard shining deep 
green leaves, which do not drop off when winter comes; but seem as 
if they were intended to make us forget that winter has power over 
vegetation : they stand opposite each other, and, if you bruise them, 
emit a fragrant aromatic odour. If you hold them against the light, 
you will see them look as if pierced with holes, closed up by a green 
transparent substance: they are not, however, pierced; but the ap¬ 
pearance is owing to their containing a vast number of little transpa¬ 
rent cells, in which the aromatic matter, to which they owe their 
fragrance, is laid up. 
The flowers have a calyx of five divisions; there are five petals of 
a dazzling white; and from the sides of the calyx, there arises, in a 
ring, a very considerable number of slender white filaments, tipped 
by little roundish anthers. 
The ovary, which is inferior, contains three cells, and a good 
many ovules; from its flat top springs one style, which ends in a 
stigma, so small that it cannot be discovered without a microscope. 
The fruit of the Myrtle is a purple berry, so like a Fuchsia berry on 
the outside that you might n^istake the one for the other; but it has 
