painfully and rudely desolate.

* * * * *

CHAPTER III.

VERONICA.

1. "The Corolla of the Foxglove," says Dr. Lindley, beginning his account
of the tribe at page 195 of the first volume of his 'Ladies' Botany,' "is a
large inflated body(!), with its throat spotted with rich purple, and its
border divided obliquely into five very short lobes, of which the two upper
are the smaller; its four stamens are of unequal length, and its style is
divided into two lobes at the upper end. A number of long hairs cover the
ovary, which contains two cells and a great quantity of ovules.

"This" (_sc._ information) "will show you what is the usual character of
the Foxglove tribe; and you will find that all the other genera referred to
it in books agree with it essentially, although they differ in subordinate
points. It is chiefly (A) in the form of the corolla, (B) in the number of
the stamens, (C) in the consistence of the rind of the fruit, (D) in its
form, (E) in the number of the seeds it contains, and (F) in the manner in
which the sepals are combined, that these differences consist."

2. The enumerative letters are of my insertion--otherwise the above
sentence is, word for word, Dr. Lindley's,--and it seems to me an
interesting and memorable one in the history of modern Botanical science.
For it appears from the tenor of it, that in a scientific botanist's mind,
six particulars, at least, in the character of a plant, are merely
'subordinate points,'--namely,