herbage, but we may gratefully acknowledge the beneficence of the Creator in clothing the earth with a colour the most pleasing and the least fatiguing to our eyes. We may be dazzled with the brilliancy of a flower-garden, but we repose at leisure on the verdure of a grove or meadow. Of all greens the most delicate and beautiful perhaps is displayed by several umbelliferous plants under our hedges in the spring.
Some of Nature's richest tints and most elegant combinations of colour are reserved for the petals of flowers, the most transient of created beings; and even during the short existence of the parts they decorate, the colours themselves are often undergoing remarkable variations. In the pretty little weed called Scorpion-grass, Myosotis scorpioides, Engl. Bot. t. 480, and several of its natural order, the flower-buds are of the most delicate rose-colour, which turns to a bright blue as they open. Many yellow flowers under the influence of light become white. Numbers of red, purple or blue ones are liable, from some unknown cause in the plant to which they belong, to vary to white. Such varieties are
