846 COLT. 
hibits seven varieties, which, in respect to their 
gradations, are entirely equal and alike. Thus, 
for example, of white, there are pure or snow- 
white; whitish or dirty white; milk or bluish 
white; amianthus or greyish white; ivory or yel- 
lowish white; parzellan or reddish white; and 
chalk or brownish white. The blue crocus often 
changes into yellow; the blue violet to white; 
the blue columbine to red; the red tulip to a yel- 
low, and the yellow to a white, &c. The same 
thing may be observed in fruits. Linnzeus has 
inferred the properties, and especially the taste 
of plants, from their colour. Yellow is generally 
bitter, red sour, green denotes a rough alkaline 
taste, paleness a flat taste, whiteness a sweet, and 
black a disagreeable taste, and also a poisonous, 
destructive property. Colours, in the vegetable 
as well as in the animal world, appear to be in 
truth a secret of nature. How, for instance, 
bright yellow and deep red or.green are made to 
| appear side by side upon a leaf, separated by the 
finest lines only, and yet not produced by any 
variety of properties which is perceptible to any 
of our senses, is a mystery to us. Moreover, na- 
| ture, in some cases, appears to distribute colours 
| with the greatest regularity, while, in other in- 
| stances, she sports in the most lawless irregu- 
larity. 
COLT. Ayoung horse. See the article Horsn. 
COLT’S-FOOT,—botanically Z’ussilago. A ge- 
nus of hardy, herbaceous, perennial-rooted plants, 
| of the jacobea division of the composite order. 
The common species, Z’ussilago farfara, is a fre- 
quent and most troublesome weed of the moist, 
marly, and clayey soils of Britain; and figures 
as an officinal plant both in the herb-list of al- 
most every old wife quack of the country, and in 
the pharmacopeias of Edinburgh and Dublin. 
Its root is long and diffusely creeping; its stems 
or flower-stalks are simple, erect, woolly, uniflo- 
ral, and about 6 inches high; its flowers droop 
while in the bud, but stand erect when in bloom, 
and have a golden-yellow colour, and appear in 
| March and April; its seed-down is sessile, rough, 
white, and shining; and its leaves are radical, 
| footstalked, erect, cordate, angled, serrated, very 
large, and of slow development,—green, smooth, 
and red-veined above, and woolly and white be- 
low,—and they develop themselves after the 
flower, so that the plant appears all-flower in 
spring, and all-leaf in autumn. Both the dried 
flowers and the dried leaves are used in medicine, 
—the former gathered at their maturity, and the 
latter in young state or incipient development ; 
and they are exhibited sometimes in decoction, 
but far more frequently by smoking in the man- 
ner of tobacco. The smoking of colt’s-foot, in 
fact, has been practised since the time of Dios- 
corides, and might, at the present day, be very 
| advantageously substituted for tobacco-smoking, 
or rather maintained for a few days as a cure of 
the filthy, abominable, and diseased taste of to- 
bacco-smokers. Oolt’s-foot is usually prescribed 
it has once established itself, it rapidly multiplies 
COLUMBINE. 
for chest-affections, but really has little effect | 
upon them ; yet in cases where a man will smoke, 
it may, as a substitute for tobacco, prevent the 
sickliness of appetite, the emaciation, the cada- 
verousness, and the stupidity which all tobacco- | 
smokers are liable to contract. 
Colt’s-foot, regarded as an agricultural weed, | 
usually occurs in moist fields which have been 
overcropped or scourgingly treated ; and, when 
from seed and from all the pieces into which the 
plough cuts its rambling roots,—and cannot be 
restrained without great labour, or extirpated 
without laying down the ground to grass. The 
preventing of it from seeding, and the careful | 
gathering up of all discoverable portions of its 
roots are the best means for repressing its ex- | 
traordinary and mischievous fecundity. Mr. 
Lisle states that a neighbour of his almost 
smothered it with two successive crops of 
vetches, and expresses a confident opinion that 
it may be thoroughly suffocated by such a five 
or six years’ course of grass as shall cover and | 
mat all the surface of the ground with a thick | 
and dense sward. He ploughed up broad clover 
in the beginning of July, and turned up roots of 
colt’s-foot, in which he observed, between earth | 
and air, many little buds as if destined to be 
flowers or leaves of the following year,—and at 
the depth of from 5 to 7 inches, shoots of a cal- 
lous body as if destined to be future roots. A 
winter’s fallow has little destructive power over | 
colt’s-foot roots; and even a summer’s fallow | 
permits all portions which are in any degree 
buried by the soil to shoot and bud and carry on 
the process of propagation,—and, in order to be 
in any tolerable degree effective, must be accom- 
panied by the hand-picking and burning of all 
parts of the plant which can be seen. 
A variety of common colt’s-foot with varie- 
gated leaves, Z’ussilago farfara foliis variegatis, 
is sometimes grown as an ornamental plant in 
gardens.—The butter-bur colt’s-foot, Z’usszlago 
Petasites, is a weed of the moist meadows of Bri- | 
tain, having a flower-stem twice the height of 
that of the common species, and carrying thyrses 
of flesh-coloured flowers in March and April. 
Two one-flowered species from Austria, and four 
thyrse-flowered species from Germany, Labrador, 
Lapland, and Italy, have a handsome appearance, 
and in two instances bear lilac and purple flow- 
ers, in others white and pale. Six or eight other 
foreign species are known in Britain; and sev- 
eral plants formerly regarded as colt’s-foot are 
now assigned to other genera. 
COLUMBINE, — botanically Aguilegia. A 
genus of hardy, perennial-rooted, herbaceous, or- 
namental plants, of the ranunculus tribe. The 
common species, Aquzlegia vulgaris, grows wild 
in woods and pastures in some parts of Britain ; 
and, in its double and improved varieties, has a 
very frequent and favourite place in the parterre. 
The stem of the wild plant is usually about 2 
