ORDER MONOGYNIA. 
149 
corolla spotted with a rich, yellow colour, which Shakspeare seemed 
to suppose contained the fragrance of the flower. Thus in the 
“ Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the Fairy says, 
“ I serve the fairy queen, 
To dew her orbs upon the green : 
The cowslips tall, her pensioners bej 
In their gold coats spots you see ; 
Those be rubies, fairy favours, 
In those freckles live their savours : 
I must go seek some dew-drops here, 
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.” 
The American cowslip belongs to the genus Caltha , of the class 
Polyandria. 
Miscellaneous Examples of Plants in this Class and Order. 
The coffee-plant (Coffea arahica) is in this class and order. This 
is a native of Arabia; it is used to a great extent by the Turks and 
Arabs, to counteract the parcotic effects of opium, which they use in 
large quantities. It is remarked by a physician, that the question is 
often asked, which is the least detrimental to health, tea or coffee ; 
he says, “ The Turks, who drink great quantities of coffee, and the 
Chinese, who make equally as free use of tea, do not exhibit such 
peculiar effects as render it easy to decide, whether they are, in 
reality, deleterious to the human system.” 
The trumpet-honeysuckle (. Lonicera ) belongs to this part of the 
artificial system, (Fig. 127, b ;) it has a very minute, five-cleft calyx, 
which is superior , or above the germ: the corolla is of one petal, 
and tubular; the tube is oblong; the limb of the corolla is deeply 
divided into five revolute segments, one of which seems separated 
from the others ; the filaments aye exserted; the anthers are oblong . 
Before closing our remarks upon this order, we will remind you 
that the wine-grape is found here. ' The general characters of the 
grape (Vitis) are a calyx five-toothed; petals adhering at the top; a 
round five-seeded pericarp. The stamens and pistils are, in some 
species, dioecious, or on separate plants ; this, according to our 
principles of classification, would carry the genus into the class 
Dioecia; but as some species have perfect flowers containing five 
stamens, and one pistil, and as it is never permitted to place in dif¬ 
ferent classes the different species of a genus, we take the dioecious 
ones, which are less numerous than the pentandrous, into the fifth 
class. 
The regions which produce the wine-grape have a mean annual 
temperature* of 50° on the northern border, and 59° on the southern. 
Lines of temperature have been fixed by Humboldt, by remarking 
the peculiar vegetables in different latitudes. He has traced the 
northern limit of the wine-grape, where the mean annual tempera¬ 
ture is about 50°, across the United States to the Pacific Ocean; not, 
however, in a straight line, for climate, although chiefly dependant 
on latitude, is yet much modified by other circumstances; and on 
* By mean annual temperature is meant a medium between the extremes of heat 
and cold. In a climate where the thermometer in summer would rise to 100 degrees, 
and in winter sink to zero or 0, the medium would be 50 degrees : this is probably not 
far from the mean annual temperature of our climate. The mean annual temperature 
at the equator is reckoned to be about 84 degrees. 
Coffee—Trumpet-honeysuckle—What are the general characters of the grape ge¬ 
nus!—Temperature of the regions which produce the wine-grape—What do you un¬ 
derstand by mean annual temperature 7 ( see note) —Within what degrees of mean an¬ 
nual temperature is the wine-grape produced ?—What is the natural limit of the wine- 
grape 7 
13* 
