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the fascinating study of Botany will unfold to me many myriad 
beauties now unobserved, even in the fair fonns of my most 
familiar favourites. The extreme beauty of each bell of the 
Foxglove will well repay a minute examination: even a 
cursory glance tells us how gracefully swelling is its outline, 
and how rich its colour; but look within, where the vari¬ 
ously-shaped markings of deep marone, like the spots on 
a leopard’s skin, ai'e edged with a lighter bordering than 
the ground-colour of the corolla, showing the pattern more 
distinctly. Then, attached to the upper side of the bells, 
and so hidden from us, as they hang round the stem and 
look modestly down, are the long white filaments, with 
their fine yellow anthers, so placed as to be in no danger of 
receiving injury from rain, to avoid which many flowers are 
endowed with the power of closing the corolla, such as the 
Daisy, Pimpernel, Maiygold, &c., and thereby preserving 
their various minute organs of fructification unhurt; but the 
arrangement of the Foxglove’s stamens renders this beautiful 
precaution needless; they lie safely nestling beneath their 
rich piu’ple dome-like canopy, curtained from wind and stonn. 
There is something very curious, too, in the manner the 
mouths of the Foxglove bells are pursed up before expand¬ 
ing;— they look as if compelled to keep a secret against 
their own inclination, and ready to burst to divulge it; yet, 
full of swelling importance and sedate wisdom, merely nod 
their clever heads, with a look of “I could an’ I would;” 
and then some sun-shiny day, the lips that have been 
gTowing brighter and brighter, and pouting with yet more 
