the styles protruding. There is a variety of this which confines its attention to the clover plant, and has, in consequence, been raised to the dignity of a separate species by some authors (C. trifolii). In addition there is the Flax-dodder (C. epilinum), previously alluded to as having been introduced from the Continent with flax-seed.
Owing to the serious nature of the attacks of this foreign invader upon our flax-crops Professor Buckman was induced years ago to experiment, with the object of elucidating its mode of growth. He found that seeds of Dodder sown strictly apart from any host-plants germinated in four days, and on the sixth a thread-like plant was seeking a foster-parent, but by the eighth, not having succeeded in its object, it died. Others were sown in company with flax-seed, and in a few days the young dodders attached themselves to the young flax-plants, made one or two tight coils round the victims, whose growth soon lifted the dodders right out of the soil, and thereupon the parasites sent aerial roots into the flax, and their natural roots dwindled and perished. Thereafter its true parasitical growth is most rapid, to the detriment of the foster plant.
The genus is included in the Natural Order Convolvulaceæe.
Corn Cockle (Githago segetum). Plate 72.
Wandering through or round the cornfields any time from June to September we are almost sure to find this beautiful flower. It is first cousin to the Lychnis, already described, and in general structure agrees with it, only differing from it in having a leathery calyx, and in the absence of the crown of little scales which surround the mouth of the corolla-tube in Lychnis. They produce honey, but owing to the length of the tube it is only accessible to the long tongues of butterflies and moths, who are instrumental in effecting its cross-fertilization. The plant is an annual, with erect branching stem, clothed with white hairs. The leaves are long and narrow, four or five inches long. The woolly calyx is in one, strongly ribbed, with five very long leaf-like teeth, that considerably exceed the petals in length. The flowers are purple, and measure nearly two inches across.
This is the only native species; indeed, some writers consider it to be only an introduced plant—a form of Agrostemma gracilis that has been altered by its continuous growth in our cultivated fields.
