SEASONAL WILD FLOWERS.-No. IV.

'Say what retards amidst the summer's blaze,
The autumnal bulb, till pale declining days?
The God of seasons-whose pervading power
Controls the sun, or sheds the fleecy shower!
He bids each flower his quickening word obey,
Or to each lingering bloom enjoins delay.'

THE autumnal crocus, or meadow saffron (Colchicum autumnale) as being one of the most interesting of the season, shall introduce the flowers which deck the earth in the month of August. It has flat spear-shaped leaves, and pale purple blossoms, which vary in colour when cultivated. Like the common crocus, it has a spathe for a calyx, a corolla divided into six parts, with the tube extending down to the bulb; but the differing number of its stamens and pistels mark it as a distinct genus. This curious plant exhibits no leaves till the following spring, and as the flower comes up too late for the due perfection of the seeds the same season, they are buried in seed vessels lodged in the embryo leaves till April, when they are thrust forth. This circumstance is thus noticed by Bishop Mant:

'Long brilliant tubes of purple hue

The ground in countless myriads strew,
Anon, but brief the space between
No more those countless tubes are seen:
The meads their verdant cloke resume,

And with that evanescent bloom,
You deem perhaps its spirit fled,
Abortive, virtueless and dead.
You deem amiss. Within the breast
Secure of parent earth, the chest

That holds the embryo fruit, is laid;
Thither by the long tube conveyed,
Safe from the force of wintry skies
Conceal'd the buried virtue lies.
Till spring-tide from the fostering earth
Shall make the meditated birth,
The germen on its stalk display'd;
And with embracing leaves arrayed.
And when the vernal grasses' bloom
Shall spread the hayfield's rich perfume,
Bright June mature in timely hour,
The seeds of August's early flower!'

The few species of wild heath (Erica) that are natives of this country are now in their greatest beauty. The common ling (Calluna vulgaris) covers hundreds of acres in the Highlands of Scotland, Ireland, and similar climates on the continent. It is a bushy shrub, from six inches to four feet high, the leaves arrowshaped; inner calyx rose coloured corolla paler. There is a variety with white flowers. The plant is converted into a very durable thatch, is capable of being made into ropes, forms excellent brooms, and affords a yellow dye. Grouse feed almost exclusively on this and its contemporary (Erica cinerea) common heath : five leaved heath, whose leaves are in trios, narrow and linear, with stem from six inches to a foot high, with deep purple flowers of exquisite beauty, in dense terminal drooping clusters. The foreign heaths, when cultivated are eminently beautiful. The Cape of Good Hope furnishes the florist with 250 varieties. Barrow, however, tells us that these splendid specimens are by no means attractive in their native soil; that jagged by the winds or shrivelled by drought, they give the country the appearance of our barren heaths.

The besotted rooted figwort (Scrophularia nodosa) is now in blossom. It is distinguished by heart-shaped leaves, tuberous root, stem from one to three feet high,

smooth; flowers in a panicled, leafy cluster, with a dull green corolla, having a livid purple lip. The whole plant emits a nauseating smell.

In waste ground, and at the edges of cornfields we see the piper's bugloss (Esleium vulgare) with large, crowded and red purple or white flowers; stem about two feet high, rough with bristles and tubercles.

The privet (Ligustrum) with its cheerful looking flowers in terminal clustres, fills in the hedges the place which is left vacant by others that have done flowering; it is a shrub with dark green leaves, which frequently remain during the winter, and white flowers which are succeeded by black berries.

The bryony (Bryonia) may not be improperly noticed here, although in bloom last month as well as this, it has a peculiarly graceful appearance entwining as it does, its tendrils around various shrubs: its leaves are palmate, rough on both sides, barren and fertile flowers on separate plants, flowers white varied with green, in ascillar panicles-berries scarlet.

If we turn into yonder copse, we shall discover the hood betony (Betonica officinalis.) We shall recognise it by its stem which is rough with deflected bristles, oblong leaves, deeply serrated, and its purple corolla. It was formerly much used in medicine, the powdered leaves excite sneezing, and the root is said to be emetic.

The common yellow toad flax (Linaria Vulgáris) is a very showy looking flower, its leaves are crowded, between linear and lance-shaped stems two or three feet high, with a terminal spike of dense yellow flowers, having an orange-coloured palate. Our walk to the sea-shore will be amply repaid by procuring a specimen of the yellow horned poppy (Glaucium holenum) it has a smooth stem; stern leaves embracing, waved; pod,

roughish with luminate tubercles; stem, from one to two feet high. The whole plant glaucous, flowers large, bright yellow, and the pod nearly a foot long. Thus, wherever we turn, we see some floral beauties awaiting us, to attract our notice either as possessing properties useful to us, in pleasing the eye, and may recal to us the sentiment to which the wise king of Israel gave utterance, when surveying another portion of God's handy works, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!"

Review of Books.

LETTERS selected from the Correspondence of Helen Plumptre. Author of "Scripture Stories," &c.-Nisbet.

Ir is not often that we meet with such devotedness of the heart to God, so deep an appreciation, so close an appropriation of spiritual things, as marked the character of this beloved servant of Christ. Minding the things of the Spirit was her constant employ; and, keeping her eye ever fixed on the high standard of scriptural perfection, she lived under a perpetual sense of her own short-coming, where the holiest who are still cumbered with flesh ever must come short; so that the extreme of self-abasing humility was the fruit of her living faith. Nothing was farther from her mind than the future publication of these letters, which are the confidential breathings of a soul filled with the love of God to connexions doubly endeared, by nature and by grace. We have no need to repeat here our personal

AUGUST, 1845.

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