this venomous one. Examine the purple and yellow bloom of the common
hedge nightshade; you will find it constructed exactly like some of the
forms of the cyclamen; and, getting this clue, you will find at last the
whole poisonous and terrible group to be--sisters of the primulas!


* It is not easy to estimate the demoralizing effect on the youth of
Europe of the cigar, in enabling them to pass their time happily in
idleness.


The nightshades are, in fact, primroses with a curse upon them; and a
sign set in their petals, by which the deadly and condemned flowers may
always be known from the innocent ones,--that the stamens of the
nightshades are between the lobes, and of the primulas, opposite the
lobes, of the corolla.

77. Next, side by side, in the celery and radish, you have the two great
groups of unbelled and cruciferous plants; alike in conditions of rank
among herbs: both flowering in clusters; but the unbelled group, flat,
the crucifers, in spires: both of them mean and poor in the blossom, and
losing what beauty they have by too close crowding; both of them having
the most curious influence on human character in the temperate zones of
the earth, from the days of the parsley crown, and hemlock drink, and
mocked Euripidean chervil, until now; but chiefly among the northern
nations, being especially plants that are of some humble beauty, and (the
crucifers) of endless use, when they are chosen and cultivated; but that
run to wild waste, and are the signs of neglected ground, in their rank
or ragged leaves and meagre stalks, and pursed or podded seed clusters.
Capable, even under cultivation, of no perfect beauty, thought reaching