338 PENTANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. Illecebrum. 
ILLE'CEBRUM.* Calyx five-leaved, cartilaginous: Bloss. 
none : Summit simple : Caps, five-valved, single-seeded. 
To the eye of taste, as an ornamental evergreen, Ivy must remain unrivalled; by its aid 
the bare walls of ruins may be renovated with the freshness of nature, shedding beauty over 
desolation; 
cc The little chapel with the cross above, 
Upholding wreaths of Ivy.” Keats. 
And whatever may be the apprehensions of the timber-merchant, in situations where it is 
allowable to substitute decoration for utility, its graceful wreaths will be held sacred, 
—- ii recompensing well 
The strength they borrow with the grace they lend.” 
That Ivy constituted a favourite embellishment of Roman villas we learn from Pliny; for 
the Consul, in a letter to Apollinaris describing his principal seat in Tuscany, represents the 
trunks of his Plane trees to be entwined with it, and extending so as to connect them 
together. Hasselquist states that about Smyrna it forms hedges, and ornaments every 
garden : and Curtis adds a practical hint, viz. that “ few people are acquainted with the 
beauty of Ivy when suffered to run up a stake, and at length to form itself into a standard; 
the singular complication of its branches, and the vivid hue of its leaves, give it one of the 
first places amongst evergreens in a shrubbery.” We would suggest as an additional 
motive for its cultivation, to those who prefer to a cheerless deathlike silence, the vocal 
grove animated with life and enjoyment, that the shelter thus afforded from wintry storms, 
the berries as food during the most inclement seasons, (remaining uninjured by frosts), 
and the covert in which to secrete their nests and rear their young, prove most attractive to 
the feathered race, and will often reverberate the soft cooing of the Cushat-dove, the mellow 
notes of the Thrush, and the varied trill of innumerable minor songsters. As presenting 
the most natural illustration of a generous friendship, Ivy must ever prove an object of 
agreeable contemplation. Thus does it attach itself even to the destitute; and when death 
lias smitten its protector, it again restores him to the honour of the forest; when he no 
longer lives, it causes him to revive by decorating his pallid branches with garlands of 
flowers and festoons of perennial verdure. 
“Hast thou seen in winter’s stormiest day, 
The trunk of a blighted oak, 
Not dead, but sinking in slow decay 
Beneath time’s resistless stroke, 
Round which a luxuriant Ivy had grown. 
And wreathed it with verdure not its own. 
-I can draw from this perish’d tree 
Thoughts which are soothing and dear to me. 
That which is closest, and longest clings. 
Is alone worth a serious thought! 
Should ought be unlovely which thus can shed 
Grace on the dying, and leaves on the dead?” B. Barton. 
Ivy is found in almost every situation, and generally requires a support. Foster, in his 
admirable Essays on Decision of Character, has deduced a striking inference from this well- 
known habit of the plant. “ I lately noticed,” says he, “ with some surprise, a branch of 
Ivy, which being prevented from attaching itself to a rock beyond a certain point, had shot 
off, with a bold elastic stem, with an air of as much independence as any branch of oak in 
the vicinity. So a human being, thrown by cruelty, injustice, or accident, from all social 
support and kindness, if he has any vigour of character, and is not in the bodily debility of 
childhood or age, will begin to act for himself, with a resolution which will appear like a 
new faculty. And the most absolute inflexibility is likely to characterise the resolution of 
an individual, who is obliged to deliberate without consultation, and execute without 
assistance.” Towards the decoration of churches at Christmas, Ivy (its berries often 
* (From illecebrct, an allurement, as enticing the Simpler into marshes and bogs. E.) 
