THE FOXGLOVE.

Digitalis; L. La digitale; Fr. Der fingerhut; Ger. Vingerhoed; Dutch. Digitale; Ital. Dijital; Sp. Digital; Port. Naperstok; Russ.

How fair the Foxglove blooms with purple bells,

Upon the grassy banks of rustic ways,

Or on the sloping sides of sunny dells,

Which Flora with her treasures rich arrays.

MS.

THE Foxglove is a special favourite with us, and, consequently, we never meet with it in our rustic peragrations without experiencing a sensation of pleasure. Of all our indigenous herbaceous plants, it is perhaps the most beautiful as well as the most stately in its appearance. Its simple erect stem grows to the height of from three to four feet, and is furnished with large, somewhat egg-shaped lanceolate leaves, and at its summit the beautiful bell-shaped flowers grow in a raceme. The flowers are numerous and large, hanging pendent from the stem by short footstalks, generally of a rich deep purple, paler inside, and spotted; sometimes they are of a pure white. In June and July the Foxglove is in its greatest beauty.

The stateliness of the plant and the beauty of its flowers has gained for the Foxglove admission into pleasure grounds and shrubberies; in the latter, the variety with white flowers has an exceedingly pleasing effect, from the contrast with the deep green hue of the leaves on the surrounding shrubs.

This magnificent plant is abundant in dry, hilly, or rocky, and subalpine districts throughout the kingdom,

in waste and uncultivated places; it is not common in lower situations, and is seldom met with in the eastern counties of England; it is frequently found in parts of Yorkshire, and is one of the flowers which Carrington prizes, among the flora of Devonshire. It is, we learn from him, a common flower on the wide waste of Dart

moor.

With a chilling aspect rise,

The rocks-of iron hue,-yet has the hand
Of Nature, e'en on them, thus frowning, flung
Enchanting forms. "As pearls upon the arm
Of the jet Ethiop," looking fairer still
From their alliance, so the snow-white moss
Has fixed itself upon the cliff, and seems
More white, more beautiful, more spotless, placed
On horror's sable brow. The graceful broom
Waves its transparent gold; the pensive fern,
In the least stir of the inconstant breeze,
Bends its light plume. Upon the sunny bank

The foxglove rears its pyramid of bells,
Gloriously freckled-purpled and white-the flower
That cheers Devonia's fields-and, by its side,
Another, that, in her maternal clime,

Scarce shuts its eye on austral suns, and wakes

And smiles on winter oft,-the primrose,-hailed
By all who live.

The Foxglove claims our gratitude as well as our admiration, for it possesses very useful and powerful medicinal properties, which were discovered by the celebrated Dr. Withering, a physician whose name is as renowned in the annals of botany as in those of medicine. These properties, however, are so deleterious, that the drug, which is a powder obtained by the pulverization of its dried leaves, can only be safely administered by a skilful physician. We may say of it, as Horace said of South

ernwood (Abrotanum), a popular medicine among the Romans, that no one dares to give it to a sick person, but the man who has learnt how to do so,

ægro

Non audet, nisi qui didicit, dare: quod medicorum est,

Promittunt medici;

in fact, Foxglove is decidedly poisonous, and death has sometimes been caused by the indiscreet use of this plant by the ignorant.

The size of our page renders it impossible for the artist to do full justice to the magnificent raceme of this flower.

The Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), which seems to have derived its generic name from the resemblance of the flower to a thimble, belongs to the Linnæan class Didynamia and order Angiospermia, and to the Natural order Scrophularineæ.

MOUSE-EAR HAWKWEED.

Hieracium; L. L'épervière; Fr.

Das habichtskraut; Ger. Haviks

kruid; Dutch. Ieracia; Ital. Hieracio; Sp. and Port.

IT has been remarked that the prevailing colour of our commonest indigenous flowers is yellow. When we say commonest, we by no means intend to convey a notion of inferiority, but to refer to their greater abundance, Thus we have the several species of Buttercup, Spear-wort, Goat's-beard, Primrose, Cowslip, and innumerable others, among which, few deserve our admiration more than the different species of Hawkweed, though less familiarly known. We shall just contrast with the prevalence of yellow, a colour admirably adapted to stand out from the rich verdure of our pasture lands and green lanes, the scarcity of scarlet, which is confined to two flowers, the scarlet poppy and the scarlet pimpernel; the comparatively small number of blue flowers, and of the various shades of red, from the pale dianthus to the deep red of the pheasant's-eye; not forgetting that the colour of the wild rose is almost, if not altogether, unique.

Mouse-ear Hawkweed being one of those flowers which opens and closes at stated hours of the day, we shall avail ourselves of the opportunity of referring to the "Horologium Flora." This was first arranged by Linnæus, whose devoted attachment to the study of botany led him to observe the sensibility of plants. This horologe is given in his "Philosophia Botanica," and furnishes us with a list of those flowers which unfold their petals at a certain hour, and again close them at a stated time. A list of twenty-four of these, extracted

from the late lamented Mr. Loudon's Encyclopædia of Gardening, is given in the "Sentiment of Flowers," with the times of their opening and closing in England. In some very pretty verses, Smith has also given us the names of the more generally known flowers which exhibit this faculty.

See Hieracium's* various tribe,

Of plumy seed and radiate flowers,

The course of time their blooms describe,
And wake and sleep appointed hours.

Broad o'er its imbricated cup,

The goat's-beard spreads its golden rays,
But shuts its cautious petals up,
Retreating from the noontide blaze.

Pale as a pensive cloistered nun,

The Bethlehem star her face unveils,
When o'er the mountains peers the sun,
But shades it from the vesper gales.

Among the loose and arid sands,
The humble arenaria † creeps;
Slowly the purple star expands,

But soon within its calyx sleeps.

But those small bells so lightly rayed
With young Aurora's rosy hue,
Are to the noontide sun displayed,

But shut their plaits against the dew.

On upland slopes the shepherd's mark
The hour, when, as the dial true,
Cichorium to the towering lark
Lifts her soft eyes serenely blue.

And thou, "wee crimson tipped flower,"
Gatherest thy fringed mantle round

Thy bosom at the closing hour,

When night-drops bathe the turfy ground.

Hawkweed. † Sandwort. Wild Succory.