1 
Wo mo 
152 SAW-WORT. 
June on flowers in corm-fields, and on grass in 
woods; and the larve may be found after har- 
vest, and even during winter, ensconced in the 
stumps or roots of stubble. The flies of a season 
issue from the cocoons toward the end of May; 
the females, after the pairing-time, pierce the 
culms of growing rye or wheat below the first 
joint, and deposit their eggs in the interior; the 
egos are soon hatched within the protection and 
concentrated heat of their snug position; the 
young larve live on the tender cellular matter 
of the culms, and on the nutritive juices of the 
sap, which ought to form the grains in the ear; 
and, when they become older, they penetrate 
through the knots to feed in the higher divisions 
of the culms; and, when they attain full size, 
they descend to the base, and cut down the 
straw nearly level with the ground, and descend 
into the stump a little below the soil, there to 
remain ensconced for eight months, and to un- 
dergo their transformations towards the next 
year’s race of flies. The plants infested with 
the larve never acquire a tolerably full ear of 
grain,—and become erect and whitened at the 
top while their healthy neighbours are still green 
and nodding,—and are liable to be broken off at 
the foot and thrown completely over by the first 
considerable wind which blows after they are 
sawed,—and, when they are pretty numerous 
and in lines, they make blank and unproductive 
tracts in a crop of the same appearance as if the 
field had been traversed in every direction by 
sportsmen or by quadrupeds. The best means 
hitherto suggested for preventing these devasta- 
tions, in any field where the larve are known to 
exist, is either to set fire to the stubble after har- 
vest, or to plough it completely over in March or 
the beginning of April. 
SAW-WORT, botanically Serratula. A genus 
of ornamental herbaceous plants, of the thistle 
division of the composite order. The name al- 
ludes to the sawed form of the leaves. One spe- 
cies grows wild in Britain; about 30—all hardy 
and chiefly perennial-rooted and purple-flowered 
—have been introduced to Britain from other 
countries; and about 10 or 12 more are known. 
The common or dyeing saw-wort, Serratula 
tinctoria, inhabits the groves, woods, thickets, 
and grassy pastures of Britain. Its root is per- 
ennial and woody; its stems are annual, erect, 
straight, solid, angular, striated, reddish, and 
about 3 feet high; its leaves are pinnatifid, 
and somewhat lyrate, and have abundant, fine, 
bristly serratures; its flowers are corymbose, 
and of a purplish crimson colour, and bloom 
from July till October; and its seeds have a 
bristly, yellowish, unequal coronal. This herb 
gives a yellow colour to wool; and is much 
used for that purpose in Sweden; and _ possesses, 
in some places, the rank of a cultivated plant. 
SAXIFRAGEH, — botanically Sawxifraga. A 
large genus of calyciflorous, ornamental, herba- 
ceous plants, constituting the type of the natural 
SAXIFRAGE. 
order Saxifrageze. The plants of this: order are 
principally low-growing herbs, inhabiting moun- 
tains, rocky grounds, dry walls, the sides of 
springs, and peculiar marshy situations, either in 
the cold regions of the world or in the alpine 
portions of the hot ones; and they form the most 
attractive and beautiful of all the groups of 
alpine flora. They do not possess either gran- 
deur or brilliance or showiness; but asa group, 
they are eminently distinguished for neatness 
and perpetuity of low-growing foliage, and for 
exquisite simplicity and meek, sweet, blushing 
beauty of blossom. One genus, indeed, is shrubby 
and quite unlike the rest; but the other genera 
afford an absolute profusion of the loveliest of 
the class of ornamental plants which are fittest 
for clothing rock-work and for decorating the 
slopes and breaks of naked banks. Five or six 
greenhouse species, 6 or 7 hardy ligneous spe- 
cies, and nearly 150 hardy herbaceous species 
occur at present in the wilds and gardens of 
Britain; and are distributed among 10 genera, 
—by far the most important of which is Saxi- 
fraga itself. A few of the species. possess astrin- 
gent properties; and one, Heuchera americana, 
is said to be lithontriptic and anticancerous. 
The saxifrage genus consists chiefly of low, 
hardy, evergreen herbs, and is, in a sense, some- 
what simple and uniform; and yet it has occa- 
sioned great perplexity to botanists, and com- 
prises a remarkably rich and almost startling 
diversity in the aggregate appearance of its 
plants, and especially in the characters of their 
foliage. Thirty-two species of it grow wild in 
Great Britain and Ireland; about 70 species 
have been introduced from other countries; and 
about 40 more species are known. The foliage 
of the genus varies from a cabbagy appearance 
to a mossy one, and from a smooth to a hairy or 
a glutinous, and from neat or ordinary to intri- 
cate or grotesque; its flower-stalks vary in 
height from one or two to about 30 inches, and 
are in some instances slender and naked, in 
others stout and leafy; its inflorescence is in a 
few cases solitary, and in the rest either panicled 
or corymbose; and its flowers are either white, 
or yellow, or flesh-coloured, or purple, or of some — 
kindred tint, and are often spotted and always 
meekly and gently beautiful. Most of the spe- 
cies thrive excellently in sandy loam or in any 
common garden soil; and all the perennials may 
be readily propagated by radical division, and 
the few annual ones from seed. 
The shady saxifrage, or London pride, or none- 
so-pretty, S, wmbrosa, is the best known of all 
the species, whether indigenous or exotic, and 
may be advantageously selected as a specimen of 
the whole. It grows wild on some mountains of 
Britain; and abounds on the mountains of the 
south-west and north-west of Ireland; and has 
a place in the little flower-plots of the humblest 
cottages ; and may sometimes be seen as an orna- 
mental edging-plant in the most aristocratic and 
