same principle the consumptive patient hoped for relief from the lungwort because of its spotted leaves; and who, in those hopeful, trusting days, doubted that the pretty hepatica of the garden, with its lobed leaves, so like the liver, was created for the benefit of the sufferer under the gloomy liver-complaint? In looking over the works on plants, written a few centuries ago, one might infer that snakes, vipers, and serpents abounded in our rural districts; and so many specific remedies are given against their bites, that surely none but the ignorant need have suffered from their effects. The very sight of the viper's bugloss would, according to Gerarde, drive vipers away from the spot, and the seed of the larkspur had, he says, a still more powerful influence. "Its vertues," says he, "are so forcible, that the herbe only thrown before the scorpion, or any other venemous beast, causeth them to be without force and strength to hurt; insomuch that they cannot move or stir until the herbe be taken away." Yet Gerarde was a good botanist and an intelligent man, and these strange notions belonged rather to people of those times in general, than to an individual.

The corn gromwell, (Lithospermum arvense,) a plant about a foot high, with narrow-pointed leaves, covered with white hairs, and seeds hard as flint, is now very general in the corn-field: and a plant called the shepherd's needle, (Scandix pecten,) attracts observation by its peculiar seed-vessels. This plant is about a foot high,

with clusters of very small white flowers. When the flowers die, they are succeeded by bunches of seed-vessels, so large that no one would suppose that they belonged to so tiny a flower. The seed-vessels are often three or four inches in length, and they taper into a sharp point at the summit; hence the rural name of the flower, which is also called Venus's comb. It is believed that this plant was eaten at table by the ancient Greeks.

Several poppies are in bloom during this month, and in the course of July, all our six wild species of this beautiful flower enliven the fields. Ornamental as they are to the pastoral scenery, waving to and fro their large handsome heads, yet they are very annoying to the cultivator. The common red poppy, (Papaver Rhoeas,) with its globular flower, is general in all parts of England, and sometimes called cheese-bowl, and head-ache. It is cultivated in Flanders, and several parts of Germany, for the sake of its seeds, from which an excellent oil is made, and used as a substitute for olive-oil. The ancients had a very different opinion of the poppy from that entertained in modern days; for, instead of regarding it as injurious to the corn-field, they looked upon its gay petals as a trophy of triumph to the land-owner, since no corn was thought good which had not an admixture of the poppy: and when the reaper offered to Ceres his thank-offerings for a good harvest, the brown ears of corn and the seeds of the poppy served for an expression of his gratitude.

All the poppies possess the narcotic principle in a greater or less degree, and the white poppy especially (Papaver somniferum) partakes it. It is now common in corn-fields. It is thought that this flower was originally brought us from some parts of Asia. It is, in several eastern countries, cultivated for the purposes of opium. Upon breaking the stem of this flower it may easily be seen to contain a quantity of thick white milk; and the opium is made by wounding the poppy-stem, and leaving the milk to harden in the sun. It is then formed into flat cakes, and covered with leaves, and in this state we receive it from the east. The Turks mingle in their opium-cakes a variety of syrups made from several fruits, and stamp these sweetmeats with the words "Mash Allah," the work of God. Alas, that pious words should have so little real meaning, and should be used as a sanction to that degrading intoxication, and destruction of bodily and mental faculties, which is the sad result of opium eating!

The white poppy is planted in many fields of England for its seed-vessels, which are used in medicine and surgery. It was formerly called Joan silver pin.

Poppy seeds, in the east, are commonly sprinkled on the tops of cakes and sweetmeats. Several seeds are, indeed, used in this way, as we should use carraway-seeds, and even the bread is thus adorned with the seed of the poppy or some other plant. The cracknels spoken of in the first book of Kings, when

Jeroboam, who caused Israel to sin, sent them as a present to the prophet Ahijah, when he asked of the fate of his sick child, are supposed by Kitto to have been a kind of cake, sprinkled over in this way with poppy-seeds, as the original word implies a spotted cake.

Poppies are found in all countries, and under all climates, from the north pole to the sandy deserts of Africa. Brilliant as is our wild scarlet flower, it is much brighter in some other lands. In the corn-fields, in some parts of France, it has a much richer tint than in the English field.

An interesting phenomenon is sometimes exhibited by red and orange-coloured flowers, and also, in a less degree, by yellow-tinted blossoms. It is that of a light of their own colour playing about the plant. This is not the result of an inflammable vapour igniting on the approach of a candle, but seems rather, as Sharon Turner has remarked, "an actual secretion of light additional to their usual show." The cause of this phenomenon has not been discovered, but it seems dependent on an electrical state of the atmosphere. It has not been seen during the bright sunshine, but has been observed after sunset, in several flowers, as the marigold, the different species of poppy, the scarlet geranium, and even in the heartsease.

A bright light is given out not by the blossoms alone of plants; several roots show a brilliance in the progress of decay; this, however, is of a phosphorescent nature. A luminosity so

powerful as to enable the bystander to read by it, issues from the common potato, when in a state of putrefaction; and professor Lindley mentions that an officer who was on guard at a barrack near Strasburg, during night, thought that the building was on fire, and, upon examination, found that the vivid light which had alarmed him proceeded from a heap of potatoes contained in a cellar. The vast coal-mines of Dresden are said almost to realize, by their lustrous illumination, the appearances described in the fairy tales of the east. In those spots, into which the sun's rays never penetrate, some species of fungus of the genus Rhizomorpha, growing over the roofs, pillars, and other parts of these subterraneous places, emit a light so brilliant and powerful as almost to dazzle the eye of the beholder; though it is sometimes so soft and subdued as to resemble a faint moonlight. This fungus is found in many other caverns besides those of Dresden, and adds greatly to the interest which such scenes excite in the traveller.

Among the flowers which, during this month, annoy the farmer, though they please the botanist, the corn cockle (Agrostemma githago) is very frequent in the field; the corn cockle is named in the book of Job; thus the patriarch says, "Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley;"* but as the word which our translators have rendered cockle is expressive of an unpleasant odour, the poppy

Job xxxi. 40.